


Hold Hands and Play Nice

by BirdyMarie, Kedreeva



Series: The Telk Verse [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Accidental Dating, Accidental Relationship, Aliens Made Them Do It, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Porn, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bonding, Chekoy, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fake Dating, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Time, Hand Jobs, Holding Hands, M/M, Mates, McChekov, Mild Language, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Post-Coital Cuddling, Practice Kissing, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Sleepy Cuddles, Touching, bed sharing, casual touching, fake mates, pretend dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-14 14:10:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 105,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8017072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BirdyMarie/pseuds/BirdyMarie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Guess it wouldn’t do to start a galactic incident just because we didn’t want to hold hands and play nice.”</p><p>McCoy and Chekov do the fake dating for the mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> This is set somewhere at the beginning of their first 5-year mission, and as such, Pavel is 20.
> 
> Update: This fic is now available [translated into Russian](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4942449) by the lovely [JustSunny](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JustSunny/pseuds/JustSunny)!

 

 

            “You’ll be fine,” Kirk had reassured him as he all but shoved McCoy into the shuttlecraft that morning for the away mission.

            Famous last fucking words, McCoy thought now. He stared skyward at the swiftly gathering whorls of green and orange, at the light arcing amidst blackening clouds, and it all looked far too much like the end of the world to mean anything good.

            “Dammit,” he muttered, digging out his communicator and flipping it open, taking only minute comfort in the device’s chirp of activation. The other members of the away party stood to his left, glancing nervously among themselves. “McCoy to Enterprise.”

            “Enterprise, go ahead, Doctor,” Uhura answered.

            “No way we take off in this- you seein’ this storm?” he asked, ready to be annoyed however she answered; either they weren’t paying attention so they missed it or they were and had ignored the increasingly dangerous anomaly.

            A fizz of noise with the hint of words answered him. That could not possibly be good. He risked a glance at Chekov, who was staring back with a deep frown, validating his fears. Chekov knew more about the communicators than McCoy, and his face said he understood precisely how much trouble they would be in if the communicators stopped working.

            “Enterprise?” he tried again.

            “-- to -- -- ready?” came the fragmented response.

            “Ready?” he repeated, realizing as soon as he said it that through the interference it would sound like he had affirmed their readiness. “Ready for what?!”

            “Transport,” said one of the two security officers that had come down with them for the meeting, one hand raised in demonstration. Light began to swirl around him even as he said the word, and McCoy’s stomach dropped through his feet. He would rather have tried to fly the shuttle back himself than trust the damn transporter to disassemble and reassemble all his atoms correctly.

            “Dammit, Jim,” he muttered as the light brightened around first one then the other security officer and they both disappeared from view with the miniscule sensation of matter displacement.

            He watched as small tendrils of light appeared around Chekov, and then closed his eyes so he would not have to see his own transport begin. There was nothing to feel, and logically he knew that, but he’d been through a few of the older transporters, the sort that left a person feeling like his insides had been turned outside, and the expectation was always there. This time, nothing of the sort happened.

            Nothing _at all_ happened, he realized after another moment, when Chekov cleared his throat. He cracked open one eye, and sure enough, they were still planetside. He scowled and beeped the communicator again, but got not even a chirp of recognition.

            “It would appear we have lost contact, sir,” Chekov said, loud enough to be heard over the stirring of wind. It was getting worse quickly. _Very_ quickly. “We should maybe seek shelter?”

            McCoy looked over to the two nearby aliens that were waiting patiently for them, and then sighed. If they couldn’t get the shuttle airborne, and transport had failed, and communications were down, then they didn’t have much choice. They would probably have to ride the storm out on the planet with their new hosts.

            “Looks like we may be stuck here,” he agreed, telling himself he’d raised his voice to be heard and not because he was irritated beyond being polite.

            The Telk brightened a little at the prospect of getting out of the storm, and motioned for them to follow as they began to move toward the center of the small city. McCoy began to understand why most of the dwellings and other buildings were low to the ground, with rounded tops and no protrusions. If storms like this were a regular occurrence, then anything else was apt to be destroyed.

            At the center of the city, Telk clustered around the entrances to the glass-smooth tunnels that led underground to safety. The soft murmur of conversation was nothing like what McCoy would have expected to hear during an evacuation, but then, the Telk had not been what he expected from the start. The universal translator had been utterly unable to parse their language since First Contact, and McCoy suspected this had to do with the way a good portion of their communication seemed to be tied up in their ever-changing skin colors. Reds and greens and blues and purples- McCoy had seen every color of the rainbow and he was fairly certain that when they changed to certain grey colors that they were actually off in the ultraviolet spectrum.

            As such, communication had been stilted, limited to what Standard the Telk had managed to learn in the last year and a half since First Contact. Some of them, like the leaders and medical personnel they had interacted with so far, knew a good deal, enough to hold a reasonable conversation. Others, like the two they had been left with when the storm began, knew just enough to stutter through basic communication.

            They couldn’t even use body language, McCoy lamented to himself as he followed their guides down into the nearest tunnel. The Telk did not appear to have many facial expressions, and their hands were more like groupings of tentacles than palms with fingers, and random flailing on both their parts had failed to yield coherency. What was perhaps even more strange, was that the Telk traveled everywhere in pairs, and with how much and how often they touched, there appeared to be some kind of touch-telepathy communication between these pairs that they never shared aloud.

            It was, to say the least, extremely frustrating.

            “These tunnels are very beautiful,” Chekov said, slowly and with a good attempt to untangle his accent. The Telk must have understood, because they turned a notable shade of pink-purple that McCoy had begun to figure indicated happiness.

            And, when he actually took a look at his surroundings instead of tromping through them toward their destination, McCoy found himself agreeing. Some kind of bioluminescent lichen - or what passed for lichen on this planet - covered the glass-smooth walls and gave off a soft, blue glow. The light reflected off whatever surfaces the lichen did not cover, lending an ethereal kind of glimmer to their path.

            Eventually, they split off from the main crowd of evacuees to travel through a low-ceilinged hall that, judging by the long, curvy tables, probably served as a mess hall. On the other side, they came to a stop in another hallway, and the Telk turned to them.

            “Stay?” one of them said.

            “Yeah, we’ll stay,” McCoy groused, only feeling a little bad at the tint of yellow that shifted into the Telk’s coloration.

            As soon as the Telk disappeared, Chekov relaxed and turned to him. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, like he almost did, and then closed it again and looked back to where the Telk had gone.

            “Spit it out, kid,” McCoy said gruffly, folding his arms and leaning against the wall to wait.

            Chekov shot him an indecisive look and then folded his hands behind his back before leaning back against them on the opposite wall. “The First Contact report did not discuss a storm like this, nor did any of the Federation investigation reports,” he said at last. “Yet these people do not seem very concerned. They are prepared.”

            McCoy scowled, but he couldn’t argue. “Yeah.” He sighed, with more resignation than venom. “Figured the same looking at all their houses up there. Someone fudged their debriefs.”

            The initial report had been bare bones, written by a couple heading a very small research vessel for the Federation, and it covered the very basics- intelligent life that had reached warp space of its own accord. The research team had stayed long enough to relay information about the Telk’s desire to join the Federation, as well as a laundry list of medications and treatments McCoy had never seen.

            Six days ago, when they’d received orders to conduct the first trade with the newly federated Telk, McCoy had insisted on coming down to the surface himself for the brief meeting. He’d had a lot of questions about the fascinating new medications, and not nearly enough about the planets seemingly boring weather. Every report filed, from the First Contact to the Finalization of Federation Membership, had been devoid of anything negative.

            McCoy should have taken that as his first clue that things were not exactly as they seemed down here.

            With a nervous shift of his feet, Chekov cast his gaze back down to the floor, and McCoy only didn’t roll his eyes because no one would see. When he made a prompting noise, Chekov looked back up and seemed to get caught in his expectant stare. He fidgeted, and then shrugged. “It is just… I am wondering what else we have not been told.”

            McCoy winced, as he had been wondering the exact same thing. The kid was sharp as a hypo needle and twice as fast. “I don’t think we’re in danger,” he said quietly, and that was all that they had time for before their guides returned.

            “Follow,” said one of them, gesturing.

            With a quickly exchanged look, McCoy followed, Chekov at his heel. They were led through another short series of hallways that spit them out into a bustling command center. All of the Telk within were shifting colors in rapid succession, and almost no verbal communication passed between them. Above the whine of machines, McCoy could hear his captain’s voice, and something within him he hadn’t even realized was tense relaxed.

            “Jim,” he called out, above the noise of the wind howling outside the small, incredibly thick windows near the low ceiling. The attention of every person in the room turned to him, and the sound of Jim’s voice died for a moment.

            “Bones?” His voice wobbled, stressed, and Bones rolled his eyes to cover the swell of affection for his best friend. “Where is he, Adminstrators?”

            “He is here,” replied one of the Telk closest to the console the voice came from, and Bones thought he faintly recognized them. Hara, if he recalled, one of the two leaders. They gestured to Bones and though it looked nothing like _come here_ , he got the message and worked his way over to the console.

            Jim flopped back in his chair the second Bones was safely on his veiwscreen. “You’re you.”

            Bones scowled at the implication. “Was that in doubt?”

            He caught the duck of Sulu’s head as he hid laughter, and Jim shot his pilot a scathing look that went unnoticed. “No,” Jim lied through his teeth.

            “We lost the transporter signal mid-transport,” Sulu added quickly, voice full of amusement, “and _some_ people were _very concerned._ Is Pavel with you?”

            McCoy looked over to where Chekov stood at the entrance of the room, patiently waiting and listening closely. “Yeah, he’s here. And in one piece, might I add.”

            Jim smiled, relieved. “Good. I don't know how much time we have before we lose communication again, so I'll be brief.  Sensors say this storm’s not letting up soon, and we can’t come to get you through it. We’ve notified Starfleet of the situation, and since we’re just… _stuck_ otherwise, they’ve requested we back up a trade ship a couple of days from here.”

            “A couple of _days_?” Bones echoed, incredulous. He felt his heart thump too hard and he very carefully kept from looking over at Chekov. They’d only been scheduled to be here half a day, and he had hoped it would be only a few extra hours, maybe an overnight stay. He wouldn’t be able to avoid the kid for _days_. “Storm can’t last that long, can it?”

            Bones caught the shift in the captain’s attention, and he turned to look at Hara. They gave a little shivery motion, and turned mint green. “This storm should pass in less than a month,” they assured him.

            “ _A month_?” Bones echoed, voice climbing as he looked back at Jim. “Dammit, Jim, you can’t leave us stranded here for a _month_!”

            “Orders,” Jim said, as though it just could not be helped, and Bones knew exactly how much bullshit that was. “Look, you’re not in any danger and we’ll be back in less than two weeks. The Telk explained that they have a room all set up for you, and they’ve invited you to come study in their hospital. It has all the nerdy medical science my chief medical officer could possibly hope for. It's practically shore leave!”

            “Jim-” Bones growled.

            “I think we’re losing the signal!” Jim told him. “You must be going through a tunnel! Enjoy your vacation, Bones!”

            The comm shut off to Uhura saying _we’re not losing-_ and McCoy scowled at the dead screen. For a good ten seconds, he let himself wonder if murdering his captain counted as mutiny if it was completely justified, and then he straightened and turned to see if Chekov had heard the entire exchange. Chekov offered him half a smile and shrugged one shoulder as if to say _what can you do, he’s the captain_.

            “You are angry,” Hara said, not a question. “You do not wish to be here?”

            With a big, deep breath, McCoy put on his big-boy pants and shook his head. “I’m angry with Captain Kirk for leaving us behind, but I’m grateful to your people for allowing us to stay, and for keeping us safe.” There was no sense burning bridges he was still standing on, after all.

            The stressed, yellow colors of the Telk around him began to soften to purples and greys. “We spoke with your captain before you arrived, and he cares a great deal for you. He was very worried for you and your mate.”

            McCoy’s heart did another too-hard thump at that, and he had to remind himself that the Telk were still learning Standard, still used some words wrong, and now they were stuck here where diplomacy was so unfortunately necessary that he couldn’t yell at anyone. “Was he now,” he said, managing not to clench his teeth. At this point it definitely wouldn’t be mutiny.

            “Yes,” Hara assured him, oblivious to the hard edge of his words. “He asked many questions. We assured him that you would be well cared for, and kept together while away from your colony.”

            _First do no harm_ , he reminded himself. They were stuck here now and they would have to make the best of it. “We appreciate your hospitality,” he said, instead of any of the other things he wanted to cuss about.

            Across the room, Chekov cleared his throat. “Maybe we can see where we will be staying?” he suggested gently.

            “Yes,” Hara said, turning a soft purple. “Jep and Kir can escort you.”

            The two Telk that had led them there changed from grey to green and then to blue, and stepped back toward the still open doorway. Chekov waited until McCoy was beside him to follow, and then leaned a little too closely into his space, his arm brushing McCoy’s. “A month is not that long,” he told him, very quietly. “This will not be so bad.”

            _Speak for yourself_ , McCoy thought, letting Chekov move ahead of him in the narrow tunnel, skin warm and tingling where Chekov had touched. Nothing about his current predicament was going to be _not so bad_.

 _Not so bad_ was life on the Enterprise and an ability to lose himself in mundane physicals and the everyday aches and pains of a star ship crew rather than dwell on his frustrating attraction to certain young navigational experts. Here, as one of the only two humans on the entire planet, there was little chance of keeping his distance.

            McCoy touched his arm, as if he could brush off the lingering sensation, and followed after Chekov.

            They wound their way back through the tunnels, through the large room they had seen, and McCoy noted that there were a few folks now milling around it in small groups. Their colors changed as they watched the humans pass by, fading back to a neutral grey when they turned back to their conversations. It was oddly quiet, and McCoy caught himself wondering if their telepathy extended to those outside their pairs.

            Jep and Kir took them a different route than the one they’d come in by, once they were through the hall. The walls down these halls were not as cleanly cut, or at least they no longer resembled glass. Lichen still clung to the ceiling, but only in certain places on the walls, which McCoy actually found a little unsettling until they stopped in front of an outline of a door on the wall. McCoy guessed the lichen didn’t grow on the walls, and a moment later, he discovered why.

            Jep stepped forward and then reached out one tentacled hand and brushed it against the outline of the door, and something… _happened_. A door almost seemed to melt out of the rock and become a real entryway. McCoy took a step back, just in case.

            Chekov had no such sense of self preservation, and stepped forward to look inside. McCoy reached one hand out to stop him, hoping the door didn’t decide to melt closed on him or worse, behind him so that they were separated. Something about the sudden tension in Chekov’s shoulders put McCoy on high alert, and he moved forward as well, just enough to see inside the doorway.

            “Sleeping place,” Jep explained as they peered inside together.

            It was sparse, much like unoccupied quarters on the Enterprise, but indeed appeared to be a bedroom. Along the left hand wall ran a tower of shelves and to the right, a short wall separating what served as a bathroom. In the center of the room was a large bed, the frame seemingly made from the same stone as the floor.

            “Go ahead, Lieutenant,” McCoy told him, laying his still-outstretched hand on Chekov’s back to get him moving. Chekov gave a little jump and pulled quickly away from his touch to get into the room before turning to look back at him.

            “What about you, sir?” he asked hesitantly.

            “Sure I won’t be far,” McCoy said, turning to their hosts. He performed the hand gesture for gratitude that Uhura had shown him before they left. Both Jep and Kir returned the gesture, turning the same pink-purple shade as in the tunnels at his attempt to speak a part of their language. “Is my room nearby?”

            As soon as he said it, both Telk turned a sickly shade of yellow and Jep made a soft trilling noise. “Unsatisfying?”

            McCoy’s eyes widened, and he shook his head, gesturing with his hands as well, though that only seemed to confuse the Telk as his gestures didn’t actually _mean_ anything. “It’s wonderful!” he assured them quickly.

            The Telk turned pink-purple again. “Excellent.”

            “It’s just…” He floundered, trying to figure out how to explain that adult humans didn’t sleep in close quarters unless they must. He already had no idea how he would manage to keep to himself for a month just living on the same _planet_ \- there was no hope if they had to live in the same _room_. “Do you have a second room like this?” he tried.

            They both paled to the color of tallow before Kir settled on mint green. “Yes, many rooms like this.”

            He relaxed a little, relieved that it was not a matter of _space_ that was the issue. “Is there a second room where I may sleep?”

            There was that sickly shade of yellow again, accompanied by a high pitched trill that quieted almost as soon as it started. “Without your mate?” Kir inquired.

            “My m- oh!” McCoy exclaimed, looking over at Pavel, who had returned to them at the sharp trill. Pavel stood very still, offering no help, and clearly waiting to see what McCoy would do before acting. “He’s not- we’re not mates,” he began, grasping for a diplomatic way to explain the Telk’s translation mistake. Apparently they had meant it earlier. “He’s a crew mate.”

            That sent the Telk into a tizzy, the trill escalating into a shrill warbling sound that had previously-invisible doors opening all along the hallway in both directions. Jep seemed to struggle to calm down for a moment, and managed to ask: “Entire crew?”

            “Entire- no!” he said quickly, paling at his inability to descalate the increasingly louder and more populated situation.

            The Telk were all turning yellow and starting to trill as well, and it was very shortly going to give him a headache. Chekov covered his ears with his palms and looked to McCoy expectantly, and McCoy had no idea what to do to make it stop.

            “He is the member of our crew who navigates for our ship,” he began, hoping that a clinical explanation would get through to them. “He is not anyone’s mate-”

            And immediately the warble rocketed up into what McCoy could only describe as _screaming_ as they began waving their tentacle hands frantically in the air.

            McCoy moved to raise his hands to his own ears, but before he could, Chekov grabbed one of them and held fast, eyes locked on McCoy’s in a silent request for permission. The noise plummeted back to a soft trill at the motion and all eyes seemed glued upon their joined hands.

            What the hell, McCoy thought- the kid was a genius. If he thought he could fix this, McCoy would let him.

            He nodded.

            “What Doctor McCoy means is that we are very new mates,” Chekov explained, clearly and so softly that the Telk had to quiet completely in order to hear him.

            McCoy startled and looked at Chekov incredulously. “We’re-” he managed before Chekov squeezed his hand a little too hard. Kid had quite a grip.

            “New mates,” Chekov reiterated, and McCoy felt his stomach drop at the repetition. This could not be happening… “Humans are shy about this, especially Leonard.” McCoy stared wide eyed to hear his first name out of Chekov’s mouth, too startled to even protest. “But, we will stay together, here.”

            That declaration, although doing absolutely nothing for McCoy’s state of shock, at least seemed to actually placate the Telk. Up and down the hall, they were turning various shades of greens and a few shades of blues, staying quiet. Still, they remained glued to their spots, all of them with their attention still riveted on both of Chekov’s hands around one of McCoy’s.

            He dropped his gaze to their hands, heart thrumming in his ears, and then looked up to catch Chekov staring at him. “Doctor,” Chekov prompted, simply, eyes ticking back and forth as he searched McCoy’s, and it was that uncertainty that allowed McCoy to regain some amount of sense.

            Carefully, he threaded his fingers through Chekov’s and told the butterflies in his stomach to cut that out _immediately_.

            They did not, much to his irritation.

            However, the interlinking of his fingers with Chekov’s did relieve the Telk entirely, and the hallway began to clear of bodies, folks retreating back into the rooms. When the last nosy stragglers had disappeared back into their rooms, Chekov shot McCoy a chagrined look and turned his attention to Jep and Kir, the only two who remained.

            “Perhaps we could have a little time to rest, alone?” he asked politely.

            Their guides shifted through colors for a few long moments, possibly communicating with only one another, before turning pale green and then vibrant pink-purple. Jep indicated the room. “Agree, stay,” they said excitedly.

            Kir nudged Jep and then moved forward, their colors brightening impossibly and then smoothing back into mint-green. “Share food soon?” they asked, then shimmered with a little yellow before clearing. “Share celebration food with us?”

            “Celebration?” McCoy asked dubiously. He didn’t like the sound of that- there hadn’t been plans for a celebration earlier. He wasn’t sure what was worse; being locked alone in a room with Chekov for the evening, or having to face a celebration full of Telk while pretending to be Chekov’s mate.

            “New mates celebration!” the Telk exclaimed excitedly together, color going neon purple.

            Definitely the celebration full of Telk, McCoy decided.

            “Yes,” Chekov said before McCoy could start another screaming symphony by saying absolutely not.

            McCoy scowled. “Yes?” he echoed, too affronted for it to sound like a warning.

            He received only a polite, innocent smile. Chekov had been spending too much time around Jim, Bones decided. “Yes, we would love to attend a meal in celebration of being new mates.”

            “Lieutenant,” he growled, tightening his grip just a little, finally managing enough irritation to quell Chekov’s smile.

            But before McCoy could actually protest, the Telk changed six different shades of purple in rapid succession. They both made a series of gestures with their hands that McCoy only faintly remembered and couldn’t return because his hand was still tangled in Chekov’s, and then Jep said: “Will return soon.”

            Then they were gone, whisking off down the hall and out of sight, leaving the two humans alone in the hallway in front of the open bedroom door.

            Chekov waited until they were for sure gone before dropping McCoy’s hand like he’d been burned. With some kind of searching look shot at McCoy, he ducked back inside their now-shared room and stopped dead in the middle of it. McCoy hesitated, taking in the tension in the kid’s wirey frame, listening to him breathe just a little too fast.

            Guilt needled at him as he slowly followed Chekov into the room. Behind him, the door melted back into place, sealing them in together, and McCoy barely noticed, too focused on trying to find some way to stop feeling like he’d just kicked a puppy.

            “Chekov,” he said, observed the minute flinch. “Pavel,” he tried instead, softer, in his best _I’m not going to hurt you, I’m a doctor_ voice.

            “I am sorry, Doctor,” Chekov answered, voice low and far too guilty. “For-”

            “Saving my ass?” McCoy interjected before Chekov could blame himself for anything. It wasn’t Chekov’s fault the Telk had made a wrong assumption, and it was McCoy’s own misstep that had set them all into a panic. “You stopped them screaming, and that was right. We’re just going to have to explain to these folks that we’re not _mates_.”

            He stressed the last, hoping to communicate that things were not going to get out of hand, that he would absolutely respect the lines between them. They could handle this like adults. Like _responsible_ adults.

            Chekov studied him for a long, quiet moment, and then relaxed a little. He gave a little shrug. “I do not see why we must explain,” he said, pausing to give McCoy another thoughtful look. “If we get ourselves into trouble while we are here, we will have no way out of it. The Telk are always in pairs. Perhaps it is best if we… _pretend_ , until we better understand our situation.”

            McCoy hesitated, turning that over in his head for a moment before he conceded to himself that Chekov had a point. If they took a wrong step here - and he considered a screaming, flailing, color-changing panic to be a wrong step - then they stood a good chance of getting themselves into trouble, with no ship in orbit to snatch them out of it. The initial reports on the Telk and their homeworld had left out the extremely dangerous storms currently occurring, and they had both already wondered what else was missing. What else was _dangerous_ here, he reminded himself.

            “Yeah, okay,” he said reluctantly. “Guess it wouldn’t do to start a galactic incident just because we didn’t want to hold hands and play nice.”

            Chekov quirked a hesitant half smile at him, some light returning to his eyes as he teased. “You do not want to play nice, Doctor?”

            McCoy scowled, without any heat. “You know what I meant, Lieutenant,” he said, taking what distance the title could give him. It wasn’t much.

            This was going to be a very long month.

  


 


	2. Dinner

            The dining hall the Telk led them to for dinner was the same hall they had passed through on their way to the command center. The low-slung ceiling hung only a meter or two above his head and the dozen or so tables scattered throughout the space looked as if they had been made to interlink. Their winding curves meant several people could sit close together, and even people sitting next to each other would have an easier time of making eye contact. Great.

            The same brightly-glowing lichen as earlier grew in every available space, giving the entire cavern a sort of soft, blue, ethereal feel. Even as he watched, the lichen changed colors, the same way the Telk did, the new shade of green traveling across the cavern like a startled flock of birds. He indulged in a moment of wonder, chased it off with curiosity about the chemical reactions that could possibly be responsible, and promised himself he would ask for a sample to bring to Sulu, if he got a chance.

            Across the room, two Telk began to motion exuberantly to them, and Chekov squeezed his hand - which he had taken as soon as they left the room, _just in case_ he had said - to point them out. A faint sense of recognition pinged for McCoy, though he couldn’t tell why. The Telk all looked very, very similar, if they were not outright identical- McCoy had not yet determined what visual markers they used to tell one another apart.

            Together, they picked their way across the room to reach the two Telk, who motioned for them to take seats beside them. The chairs appeared to grow right from the floor, as did the tables when McCoy actually looked at them closer. It had been the same way with the bed, and the shelves, and the short bathroom wall, and McCoy began to wonder if the Telk had just carved their entire society out of solid rock.

            “We welcome you to dinner!” exclaimed one of the two Telk, and McCoy squinted at them.

            “Oma?” he asked, recognition ticking again. He _did_ know these two.

            “Yes!” they exclaimed, turning three shades of pink-purple at once. “Greetings, Doctor McCoy. It is good to see you again.”

            He smiled, taking his seat, careful not to release Chekov’s hand. In no way did he want to start another shrieking meltdown in the middle of dinner. “It’s good to see a familiar face,” he replied.

            Oma and their mate, Aru, had greeted them on the surface when they had arrived. They headed up the medical facility for this entire sector and, if their previous interactions with McCoy were any indication, they were both very, very smart. Their Standard was far ahead of any of the others they had dealt with, excepting the actual leaders, Yew and Hara. He suspected that these two would be responsible for occupying his time through the storm.

            Oma’s purple faded to a peculiar shade of grey as they took a seat beside Aru, across from McCoy. The two touched briefly, as if greeting, even though they had been apart only a few moments. “We were requested to perform company for you,” they told him softly. “YewHara offer apologies. None realized you were soft-bonds.”

            “Soft-bonds?” McCoy asked, not sure he liked the sound of that very much.

            Sickly yellow chased by pale orange flickered across Oma’s skin. “I do not know a Standard word for it. Your bond is soft. New. This is very important to us. Our soft-bonds occur in the spring, several months from now.”

            “All of them?” Chekov asked, leaning a little over the table so that he could see Oma better. His shoulder brushed warm against McCoy’s arm.

            “Agree,” Oma said. “The young of the year bond together. The first year to follow this is soft-bond.”

            McCoy couldn’t help his raised eyebrows- luckily that didn’t mean anything to the Telk, as none of them had eyebrows. None of them had hair at all. “Your people choose mates at one year of age?”

            “Agree,” Oma said again. “Yours do not. It is…” They looked over at Aru uncertainly, warm yellows swirling over both their skins before Aru shifted and cleared to mint green.

            “Humans do not gain age the same,” Aru said gently, like they were forgiving the human race for its inability to grow up faster. “It is unusual. Jake and Amanda told us that Terrans bond individually, on varied year times. We accept this.”

            McCoy looked over at Chekov, not sure who Jake and Amanda were, and Chekov’s quiet ‘First Contact’ reminded him that those were the names of the original couple to visit this planet. He turned his attention back to Oma and Aru and opened his mouth to comment further, but closed it into a polite smile when he noticed the Telk around them had all hushed. It appeared that dinner had arrived.

            “This is not the time for soft-bond food,” Oma explained very quietly, pleased and flushing with purple-pink. “But it is made for you.”

            “What is soft-bond food?” Chekov asked curiously as covered platters were placed at their table, a couple of them radiating enough heat to shimmer the cool cavern air.

            Oma turned to look at Aru, a few colors swirling back and forth between them, and then Oma shivered and Aru spoke. “It contains many nutrients good for those in bond state. Our young are often… exuberant in their early affections.”

            McCoy choked, giving the Telk in front of him a startled, disbelieving look at the blatantly forward words. Beside him, Chekov’s ears pinked as he realized what they were implying, and both of their guides turned an alarming shade of bright yellow. Oma lowered their voice as they leaned forward to be heard over the din of platters being uncovered all around the room as the Telk began their dinner.

            “Apologies, we did not mean to anger you,” Oma said urgently.

            “Anger…?” McCoy asked, glancing askance at Chekov, and drawing a quick conclusion. “Oh! He’s not angry,” he explained. “Humans don’t change colors like the Telk do. Well, we do, but not to show our emotions. Well-”

            “It is called blushing,” Chekov interjected, cheeks still a little pink, but a smile on his lips. “Our blood is red, not clear like yours. When we are warm, or embarrassed, or angry or- ehm…” he cleared his throat and shot a quick glance at McCoy before continuing. “Our capillary vessels in our skin widen to bring our blood closer to the surface to cool us,” he finished in a rush, blush deepening as he turned his attention to his empty plate.

            “That’s right,” McCoy said, staring, impressed the kid knew the biological explanation. He would never admit he liked hearing even layperson technical talk out of Chekov’s mouth. He dragged his attention away from Chekov and back to the Telk, who were staring thoughtfully at the two of them, both a neutral grey.

            Then Oma turned blue, straightened, and reached to uncover the platters closest to them. An amazing array of scents blossomed and a soft, pleasant thrum filled the air. “Eat,” they encouraged.

            McCoy hesitated, realizing that he still had hold of Chekov’s hand, that he had barely noticed, and that holding hands through the entire dinner was about to be inconvenient. Chekov seemed to realize it at the same moment, but instead of pulling away, he just looked over, and McCoy knew they were thinking the same thing- they did not need to incite another screaming incident.

            Across from them, Aru made a very silly noise and turned an even sillier shade of neon pink, drawing their joint attention.

            “Telk do not like to stop touching their softbond either,” they said quietly, sounding pleased.

            McCoy only just managed not to jerk his hand free of Chekov’s as he began to stammer. “That’s not- I wasn’t-”

            Once again, Chekov rescued him from further embarrassment by slipping his hand from McCoy’s first and selecting one of the blue, puffy-looking items from the closest tray. “It is very enjoyable,” he said, consonents going soft over the v’s. “But not very convenient for eating.”

            Oma turned a matching shade of pink and the two made the same silly noise as Aru just had before turning their attention to their plates. As no one was screaming, or even really looking at them anymore, McCoy took the opportunity for distraction to pick and choose a few of the items offered on the shiny platters. He chose one of the same blue puffs Chekov had, along with something akin to a ramekin filled with some kind of soup, and a sliver of what looked like meat. McCoy didn’t want to know if it wasn’t.

            Everything was _delicious_.

            Unnaturally so, but McCoy didn’t have it in him to complain that the soup tasted a lot like the chili his grandma used to make, and the meat could have passed as better southern-fried steak than the replimats had ever made aboard the Enterprise. Some kind of ruddy-colored drink passed by their space at the table, and McCoy poured himself a glass and utterly failed to contain his smile when he found it tasted exactly like sweet tea.

            “This is fantastic,” tumbled out of his mouth with more volume than thought. Chekov laughed, drawing the attention of all the Telk in the vicinity, and McCoy felt his cheeks heat just a little in embarrassment at his small outburst.

            “You like this?” Aru asked curiously, Oma thrumming softly beside them, their natural grey tinting with pink again. “This noise?”

            “What?” McCoy said, bewildered.

            Beside him Chekov laughed again, and the Telk around them turned pink, none of which helped his deepening blush. Infinitely worse, when he turned to Chekov for help, the kid just looked right back, eyes alight with amusement as he waited for McCoy to answer whether or not he liked his laugh. McCoy scowled.

            “Yeah,” he gruffed, focusing back on his food and knowing he was going to have to elaborate. “He’s… he’s got a good laugh.”

            He glanced sidelong at Chekov just in time to see the soft, fond smile before it smoothed away into a broader grin. “The food is very good,” he agreed, finally offering to help. “It reminds me a little of home.”

            McCoy looked over, heart stammering for a second to hear his own sentiment echoed back at him from Chekov. “Me too,” he said, and there was that soft smile again for just a moment.

            More happy thrumming from around them, chased by excited murmurs and bright colors, before Oma spoke. “We are pleased. This food will be good for you. Your chemicals are… in flux.”

            “Our chemicals?” McCoy echoed, straightening a little, brows drawing together.

            “Agree,” Aru said. “We understand, do not worry. Your bond is still soft, so you are not able to balance each others chemicals.”

            McCoy traded a confused look with Chekov, mind racing over a dozen different clues that had been tickling at the back of his mind. The constant touching, verbalization alongside seemingly telepathic communication, the way the Telk tended to react in groups… “You speak through chemical exchanges,” he concluded carefully. “This… the soft-bond is a chemical bond.”

            “Yes,” Oma said plainly, turning a soft yellow-orange in confusion.

            McCoy let out a breath and allowed the realization to course down all the pathways in his mind that let him sort new information. The Telk were able to read and send chemical signals as a part of their language, which was probably a good part of why the universal translators didn’t work on their language. They made a chemical bond between pairs and, McCoy guessed, probably with their surrounding community to some extent.

            And they were, apparently, capable of reading chemical changes in human bodies as well. No wonder they’d thought there was something between the humans- McCoy probably reeked of attraction and Chekov was young, still young enough that there was a good chance his body chemicals were not terribly stable.

            “You bond only with your mate?” Chekov asked, pulling McCoy’s thoughts to the present again.

            The two Telk hummed, soft and low, before Aru answered. “Agree. A mate bond is necessary, or chemical imbalance will cause death. Some Telk make more than one bond, but that is rare; it is difficult to stay close enough to more than one other.”

            “You have to stay close to your mate?” Chekov prompted with a glance to McCoy, clearly trying to figure out their own situation, and what they could do to explain that humans did not bond like this. Maybe they could have the entire _mates_ thing resolved before dinner ended.

            “Agree,” Oma said, looking uncertain for a moment before changing to a pale yellow-green. “We remember pre-bond humans are not the same. You can be far away from other humans. Telk cannot. Before bond, our young still must stay within groups. It is…” they trailed off, hunkering down a little.

            Aru reached across the space between them to touch Oma, and looked over at the humans. “It is not good for Telk to be alone. We die, or… worse.”

            “Worse?” McCoy asked. He wasn’t naive enough to think death was the worst thing that could happen to a person. In fact, he knew a lot of things worse than death, but he wanted to know what _they_ thought was worse.

            Aru and Oma turned a dark shade of orange, burnt almost brown. “Agree,” Oma said, voice so low the humans had to lean in to hear them. It was a long moment before they spoke again, as if having to steel themselves for what they had to say. “There are stories about white Telk. Creatures who… show all colors at once, and they do not make chemicals. They cannot connect to others, they cannot bond. They are _freysat_.”

            “Freysat?” Chekov echoed, looking askance at McCoy nervously. McCoy knew the feeling; this didn’t sound good.

            “Apologies,” Oma said, shifting yellow again. “I do not know a Standard word for it. They are broken. They do not speak truth. This is the worst offense. Deceit harms the community, even unintended, and cannot be tolerated.”

            McCoy felt his belly swoop in fear, though he wasn’t sure exactly why yet. They hadn’t seen any white Telk while they’d been here. “So what… what happens to them?” he asked, not sure he wanted the answer. He could only imagine some kind of secret detention facility full of distressed, solitary Telk being held against their will.

            “We cull them,” Aru said simply.

            “You _what_?” McCoy echoed loudly, flabbergasted.

            Aru looked taken aback at his outburst, and Oma reached to touch them, and McCoy wondered how anyone - himself included - could have missed the extrasensory communication. “Apologies, we mean no offense,” they said. “We must cull these individuals when they are born.”

            “ _Why_?” McCoy asked, aware his voice was climbing. A few other Telk nearby had turned their attention toward the small group, but McCoy found he couldn’t care. They were literally talking about killing off _children_ because they didn’t work the same as the rest of the Telk.

            Oma kept their voice low and even. “If we did not, then their inability to bond would most likely mean a painful death. A very long time ago, there were… some, once, that survived. They were freysat, unable to speak truly.” Oma gave a little shiver and paled to the color of tallow. “They could not join the community, they could not bond. They hurt others; they were a threat. We will not allow this again.”

            “So you kill them,” McCoy breathed, barely feeling the grasp of Chekov’s hand against his.

            “Agree,” Oma said simply. “We would prevent any such dangerous creatures from existing. You should not worry, Doctor. You are safe. You are bonded, and there are no white Telk in the world anymore.”

            McCoy’s vision blurred as the puzzle pieces began to fall into place- the way the Telk reacted to the thought of Chekov either being away from all of his mates or not having any mate at all, and the assumption that the two of them were mates. They had unwittingly come within inches of presenting themselves as akin to the white Telk. To these people, they would surely be exactly the same sort of dangerous creatures, with no ability to change colors or interpret chemical changes or form a bond the way the Telk did.

            He looked over and caught Chekov staring at him with slightly wide eyes, and he knew the kid had come to the same conclusion- there was a very good chance these people would have killed them if Chekov hadn’t spoken up and declared them new mates. There was a very good chance they _still_ would kill them, if they found out the humans had not _spoken truly_.

            Letting out a shaky breath, McCoy gave Chekov’s hand a gentle squeeze and pulled himself together. They were in this together now, in _deep_ , and the only way out was forward. Jim would return in less than two weeks, and, storm be damned, he would come down and rescue them. He had to.

            They just had to be convincing until then.


	3. And Dancing

 

 

 

            Dinner lasted approximately forever, and every new platter brought to the table contained a food of strange shapes and colors with familiar tastes. McCoy didn’t relax at all through any of it, watching their hosts closely for any sign that their conversation about the White Telk had been anything more than what it seemed; a story. They gave no indication of ulterior motives for the history lesson, and it was not until Chekov gave him a gentle nudge and a concerned look that he realized how tense he still was.

            “Sorry,” he grumbled, straightening in his seat. “Just want to get back to the room.”

            Across from them, Oma turned a bright shade of pink, a silly little noise escaping them much as it had earlier. “There will be plenty of time to have your mate to yourself,” they said, low enough they shouldn’t have been heard, though pink shimmered on the skin of several Telk nearby.

            McCoy felt his cheeks heat as Chekov covered a laugh with a cough at their misunderstanding. “That’s not-“

            “It’s okay,” they said, smoothing into a soft pink-orange. “We think you will enjoy what comes next.”

            Beside him, Chekov smothered another laugh and said: “Dancing?”

            “Dancing!” Oma repeated brightly.

            “How did you-“ McCoy started to ask, trailing off when he followed Chekov’s pointed finger to what appeared to be musicians setting up along one wall of the hall. He sighed. Of course there was dancing.

            Stumbling, hesitant notes of music began to filter through the murmur of the crowd, and McCoy was surprised to find Chekov had closed his eyes to listen. He watched one of the Telk pluck at a string with a tentacle and another high, clear note rang out, a little warbly and a lot beautiful. When the musician began to play in earnest a moment later, McCoy thought it sounded a lot like what would happen if a harp and a flute harmonized.

            The other instruments joined in one by one, and soon the hall was filled with a soft, slightly offbeat melody. McCoy followed Chekov’s example and allowed himself to close his eyes for just a moment to listen to it more closely.

            “You like this?” Aru asked.

            “It is beautiful,” Chekov answered for them both. “What is the big instrument?”

            “Kil’ta,” Aru said, turning a pretty cornflower blue. “We grow kil’ta in very deep water. One takes six years to mature and it must grow perfect. We have only two in this settlement, and only Barupai play them.”

            Chekov whispered something delighted in Russian, still staring across the room at the instruments as they played. He smiled, and then looked back at McCoy for a second before addressing Aru. “We do not know your dances.”

            Oma and Aru both turned purple and blue, giving little flails reminiscent of the meltdown in the corridor earlier. For a moment McCoy dreaded it was going to start all over again, but they simply settled on a pleasant shade of hospital blue and Oma gave a final, happy trill. “We shall teach you.”

            “Y’had to say something,” McCoy groused, but Chekov didn’t look at all chagrined, just gave his hand an extra squeeze. McCoy resigned himself to however much longer they would have to be here, exposed, without a chance to discuss everything that was happening.

            Around them, some of the Telk were clearing tables of dishes and platters and glasses. McCoy and Chekov both stood to help clear their own dishes, something which appeared to delight all of the surrounding Telk if the shade of plum they turned was any indication. At the far end of the room from the instruments, they turned their dishes over to a few Telk with carts, and McCoy stalled for as long as he could by watching the Telk apparently _melt_ the tables and chairs into the floor to clear space.

            By the time they were done, the music had become far more quick and lively, though it still played to a rhythm that felt just a little off somehow. As he watched the Telk gather in loose groups and begin to dance, McCoy counted the beats of the song and smiled when he realized what was happening.

            The kil’ta were playing to two different tempos, one chasing the other until they swapped places when it caught up, and then they spread apart again. The Telk, in their whirling, color-changing dance, were doing the same, one of each pair following each kil’ta’s song, and coming together only when the instruments did. McCoy wondered, briefly, if there was a chemical element to the dancing as well, but before he could ask, he noticed an anomaly among the crowd.

            Chekov, trying to copy the foot patterns of the Telk next to him, who was patiently repeating the little whirls and dips and then watching to see if Chekov did them correctly. McCoy thought it was Aru, but in such a teeming throng of Telk, he realized he had no idea how to tell the difference anymore. They all looked alike, all dressed alike, all-

            It clicked in his head that they _were_ identical, actually visually identical, and that they must be using chemical signals to identify themselves. His belly sank a little at the thought; he and Chekov couldn’t sense chemicals like the Telk could, and that put them into the same category as the white Telk.

            “Doctor!” Chekov called from across the room, waving a hand to get his attention. “Come try!”

            At least one of them didn’t appear to be worried about it.

            He put on his very best, most formal frown, and called back: “I don’t dance, kid.”

            A brilliant smile lit Chekov’s face. “Not even at new year parties?”

            McCoy felt his cheeks heat, surprised that Chekov remembered that, considering the amount he’d imbibed as well. “I don’t dance _like this_ ,” he amended loudly, and immediately regretted the decision as the music ended at the exact moment he started speaking and every head turned his way.

            One of the Telk beside Chekov stood up taller and spoke loudly. “How do you dance, Doctor?” It was Oma, which meant the Telk teaching Chekov had probably been Aru.

            “I-“ he said intelligently. He _did not_ dance. He knew dances, could perform some of the formal dances he’d had to learn at Starfleet for diplomatic reasons, and two dances from cultures the Enterprise had encountered so far in their journey, but none of those applied here. None of them were dances he enjoyed.

            “You could show us a dance from home, maybe?” Chekov suggested lightly, coming to his rescue.

            McCoy swallowed against the little swoop his belly gave to think of teaching something of Earth to these people, but everyone was still staring at him, and he didn’t have any better ideas, so he nodded. This was going to be a complete disaster, but if he was teaching them dancing then he wouldn’t be expected to hold hands with Chekov, or tell anyone anything about their bond, or human mating habits, or any of the other dozens of subjects the Telk would inevitably find a way to be nosy about.

            “Right, everyone come stand in lines,” he told them, raising his voice to be heard by everyone.

            Chekov helped him maneuver the Telk into a few sets of parallel lines, and then McCoy beckoned Chekov to the front with him to demonstrate. Before he turned his back to the lines so that they would all be facing the same direction, he noticed that the musicians were standing at the ready as well, watching, and he wondered if they would know any music that matched what he was about to do.

            “This is pretty simple, so just copy what I do,” he told them all.

            He performed the first few steps and listened to the shuffle of bodies behind him, though his eyes stayed fixed on Chekov’s feet. When he got it right the first time, with no hesitation, McCoy looked up to find Chekov grinning at him and he knew, without asking, that this was not Chekov’s first experience.

            He would have to remember to ask about that, later.

            For now, he settled into an easy routine, one step at a time, letting go of his apprehension for a while to bring a little bit of the south to a world many light years away from home. The Telk paid rapt attention and learned quickly, and it wasn’t long before he had them all repeating the dance in damn near perfect synch. After the first six successful repetitions, the music picked up again- nothing McCoy recognized, of course, but a perfect fit to the dance with an allowance for the double-tempo style of Telk music.

            Partway through the song, McCoy risked a look over at Chekov, who was beaming as he kept pace with the dance, smooth and simple and like he’d been doing it for ages. Behind them, the Telk stepped together and kicked their heels out and somewhere in the middle of watching the rows step to the left and right to different tempos, McCoy realized that he, Doctor Leonard McCoy of the starship Enterprise, just taught a room full of aliens how to line dance.

            He closed his eyes, without losing his step, and told himself there was at least the _possibility_ that Jim wouldn’t find out about this.

            He was getting pretty good at lying to himself.

            Though… it was not _all_ bad, he thought as he stole another glance at Chekov, who was smiling broadly and without reserve. When the song spun to a stop, he laughed and applauded along with the Telk’s wild color changes and flailing, and McCoy knew he was in deep. He wanted nothing more than to hear that laugh forever, to cause it in every way he ever could.

            “That was _wonderful_!” Chekov exclaimed breathlessly, eyes bright as he turned that smile to the doctor, and McCoy had the brief thought that he’d seen stars shine less brilliantly.

            “Shit,” McCoy breathed out, without meaning to, and Chekov’s smile fell into concern for a moment. “It- it’s fine,” he managed, waving Chekov off before he could ask questions. “I’m going back to the room. We both should.”

            “Doctor,” Chekov said firmly, waiting until McCoy looked at him before continuing. “Are you okay?”

            No, he thought, but he forced a smile anyway. “Yeah, ‘m just tired,” he replied. “It’s been a long day, and I’m old.”

            Chekov’s face did something McCoy couldn’t place, and then he gave a little huff of laughter and the sort of smile that made McCoy feel young. “Not that old, Doctor.”

            McCoy scrabbled for some kind of distance from that smile. “Almost twice your age,” he pointed out.

            “That gets less true every day,” Chekov said without skipping a beat, shrugging one shoulder. “But perhaps you are correct- it has been a long day.”

            “We can lead you to your room,” Oma offered from beside them, a bright shade of pink.

            McCoy wished he knew the difference between pink and purple, but he just motioned toward the exit instead of asking. The Telk all began to call goodbyes to them as Oma and Aru bustled them through the crowd, and several reached out to touch them, soft brushes of tentacles against skin. Odd, that they were so dry, the same way human hands were, and yet nothing about the texture resembled human skin. They felt softer, more like well-worn, raw leather, and McCoy could guess at least part of the reason they enjoyed touching so much.

            It didn’t take them long to reach their shared room, and Oma and Aru did not linger beyond informing them that someones would be sent to fetch them in the morning. McCoy at least waited until the door was closed before dropping his smile.

            “Thank God,” he hissed, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots.

            Chekov stood very still at the doorway, watching, his arms behind his back. When he got no response, McCoy looked up to see what cat had got his tongue and was met with the very picture of apprehension. With a start, he realized that they were _alone_ now, and that they hadn’t had a chance to really discuss any of this since the revelation that there was no backing out, and that the Telk had many, _many_ expectations of bonding behavior.

            He blew out a soft breath, scraping around to find some way to tell Chekov that it would be okay, that nothing untoward would happen, and Chekov cleared his throat and cast his eyes down to the floor.

            “I am sorry, Doctor,” he said softly. “If I had not said what I did, we would not be in such trouble. If I had not told them we were mates, we would not have to continue lying to them. If I had not-”

            _Shit_ , McCoy realized. The kid thought he was _mad_ _at_ _him_ for all of this, but that had never even crossed his mind. “Chekov,” he said, interrupting him.

            “-then- yes?” Chekov stopped, poised like he absolutely expected McCoy to berate him, like he thought that he deserved it.

            McCoy sighed, and got to his feet, crossing the room to stand in front of Chekov until he looked up at him, finally. “None ‘a this is your fault, d’you understand? I’m not angry with you. We were in an unfamiliar situation without access to help or information, and you did what you had to do.”

            “I made the situation worse,” Chekov argued with a small frown.

            “It’s not… worse,” McCoy told him. It was worse, in some ways, but overall they were better off pretending to be mates than the alternative, and he tried to put that into perspective. “If you hadn’t done that- look, if we’d told them humans don’t bond, that we can’t, without knowing about their… _white telk_ story, what do you think would have happened?”

            Chekov sighed heavily and dropped his gaze again, and McCoy knew he must have had the same conversation with himself earlier. Of course he had- the kid was a genius, there was nothing McCoy was going to say that Chekov hadn’t figured out on his own. He may have barely hit double decades a few weeks ago, but there was nothing so young about the lieutenant’s sharp mind.

            “Exactly,” McCoy said with a nod. “You’re a smart kid. You did well. Now we just gotta… do whatever we have to do from here out, to make it back home."

            “That will not be easy,” Chekov said plainly, face doing a little scrunch of distaste as he looked back up at McCoy. “Pretending for a day or two is one thing but…”

            “Yeah,” McCoy said, cutting him off, because he’d had all the same arguments with himself tonight already. “Month’s a long time,” he agreed slowly. “But ah… listen, Chekov… Lieutenant… … Pavel,” he settled on, wanting to make sure he understood that he was completely serious about this. “Nothing, and I mean _nothing_ , happens that you aren’t okay with, d’you hear?”

            “If we stop, they will know we lied,” Pavel said carefully, like he was the one who had to make sure McCoy understood the risks.

            “I know, and it’s better if they don’t find out anything, but if-“ He swallowed, jaw clenching for a moment, and then he reached out and laid a tentative hand on Pavel’s shoulder, meeting his eyes. “If it’s a choice between you and them, well, then it’s no choice.” That much had to be said, whatever it revealed about him to Pavel.

            With a slight shift in balance, Pavel brushed his fingers along McCoy’s forearm, just enough to tell McCoy to break the contact. “They would be very upset. They may try to hurt or kill us if they find out,” he said firmly.

            McCoy lowered his arm, and gave a small shrug. “Don’t care. If either of us decides we aren’t okay with things, then we stop, and they can scream all they want. If they get hostile then we’ll just- we’ll leave.”

            “And go _where_ , Doctor?” Chekov asked pointedly, motioning toward the glowing ceiling, or what lay beyond it so far above them. “There is nowhere to go. That is most of the problem.”

            “Yeah,” McCoy agreed. “It won’t be pretty, or comfortable, but there’s always the shuttle. It’s not too far from the entrance to the tunnels and even on the ground it’s got two weeks of life support and at least some emergency rations. We’ll figure it out, if it comes down to that.”

            Chekov considered this for a long few moments, eyes flicking over McCoy, before he relaxed and offered up a tentative smile. “It is better we do not have to figure it out,” he concluded. “I do not believe it will be a problem, to pretend. And it could be worse, yes?”

            “Worse?” McCoy echoed, unsure exactly how much worse it could possibly get.

            Chekov flashed him a sly smile, the tension of the last few moments slipping away from them both. “One of us could be trapped here with the Captain,” he said.

            McCoy couldn’t help the bark of laughter at the joke. Yeah, he thought. Things could _definitely_ be worse.

 

* * *

 

            At some point while they were at dinner, the Telk had left some kind of soft, absorbent cloth folded over the half-wall by the bath. McCoy had let Chekov clean off first while McCoy sat on the far edge of the bed, his back to the bath and his PADD in his hands. At least they’d been carrying them when the storm hit, because they didn’t have much else. He wasn’t sure what they were going to do about extra clothing, as everything they had was still in the shuttle. Their resources were limited to what they’d been carrying on their persons.

            Which wasn’t a whole lot, all told- their formal clothing, both their personal PADDs, a medical tricorder, and a carry case of medical supplies McCoy insisted on bringing with him everywhere any time he left the ship. At least the kit was full of _useful_ things, rather than sixteen different ways to treat whatever trouble Jim had gotten himself into this time.

            But they would need to do something about fresh clothing, as their dress clothes were dusty and clammy with that worn feel of day-old clothing. He had, admittedly, languished a little longer than strictly necessary in the tub, letting the intense heat soak into his bones and relishing the rare pleasure of a bath with actual _water_ instead of the sonic junk on the Enterprise.

            It was only when he’d gotten out again and begun to towel off that he realized that they didn’t even have sleepwear on the planet. They hadn’t expected to stay overnight, and the thought of getting back into any part of his dress clothing was reprehensible, but…

            He looked over to where Chekov was sprawled on one side of the bed, his PADD in hand and an intense look of concentration scrunching his features. Chekov hadn’t bothered putting on clothing, not any of it, was just lying wrapped up in the considerable amount of towel on top of the bedding. When he noticed McCoy staring, he set the PADD down on his belly and looked back.

            All of McCoy’s thoughts rattled around uselessly like so many stones in the bottom of a barrel, producing nothing of worth for him to say. Instead, he moved around to the far side of the bed and sat down, setting his clothing on the floor beside his feet, and busied himself scrubbing at his wet hair with an edge of the towel.

            “Doctor?” Chekov said, waiting for McCoy to look over one shoulder at him. McCoy wasn’t sure what he expected to follow, but it was not: “How do you suppose we turn off the lichen?”

            McCoy huffed an amused laugh and turned his gaze up to the ceiling and walls, covered in the glowing lichen like the rest of the compound. It had remained a steady, golden color since they arrived in the room, not reacting at all to their movements or vocalizations. “No clue. For as nosy as these people have been, they sure didn’t tell us much useful.”

            Chekov snorted and picked up his PADD to continue reading.

            Though McCoy waited a minute to determine if the kid was going to say anything else, nothing else seemed to be forthcoming. He bent to fish his briefs out of his clothing pile and pulled them on under the towel. For a long few minutes, he just stared at the rest of the pile of clothing, listening to the steady sound of Chekov breathing, interrupted only when he scrolled his PADD.

            With a sigh, he bent over to snatch up the black undershirt. He was clean, and the shirt wasn’t, but it was better than-

            “You don’t have to,” Chekov said, dropping the PADD back flat on his chest and staring intently when McCoy looked over his shoulder. For a second he seemed to have some kind of debate with himself, and then he offered a tentative smile. “I don’t mind.”

            “I mind,” McCoy shot back, pulling the shirt over his head. It was every bit as disgusting as he thought it would be, and he was glad it gave him something else to focus on for the time being.

            “I see,” Chekov said softly. “Should I dress again as well?”

            McCoy froze halfway to lying down, heart skipping a beat as his breath took a shallow dive. He’d mostly been ignoring the fact that he was going to have to sleep next to Pavel, or else sleep on the floor, and he was not nearly young enough to get away with that. In no way was he prepared to remove clothing from the situation.

            “Do what you want,” was what came out of his mouth, more of a hoarse rasp than anything resembling conviction. He lay down on his side, facing away from Chekov like it mattered. It didn’t. He could practically feel the kid staring at him.

            He closed his eyes.

            “Doctor?”

            He did not open them. “Lieutenant?”

            There was a heavy silence, long enough that McCoy stifled his sigh and turned over to face Chekov, who drummed a thumb on the edge of his PADD in thought. Finally, he met McCoy’s eyes. “Tonight, when they were teaching me to dance, Aru asked me how you and I became bond mates.”

            McCoy stiffened, but kept his voice even. “What did you tell them?”

            “I did not tell them anything,” Chekov said, radiating apprehension from every tense line of his body. “I called you to us. I thought maybe you would have an answer, but…” At that, a small grin curled at his lips, though it faded just as quickly. “They did not ask again, but someone else might.”

            There was a question in there, somewhere, but it took McCoy a moment to find it. He gave a slow blink and then cleared his throat. “So you’re suggesting we… what? Come up with a cover story?”

            “Yes,” Chekov agreed, seemingly relieved McCoy had cottoned on so fast. “To ensure our stories match.”

            McCoy gave him a look, that little part of his brain generally reserved for Jim’s shenanigans chiming that something was up. “And I suppose you have an idea already?”

            The barest hint of pink dusted at Chekov’s cheeks before disappearing just as quickly. “Yes,” he admitted. “It would be best to stay as close to our true history as possible, I think. We met on the Enterprise, and you saved my life soon after.”

            “How’d I do that?” McCoy asked. He certainly hadn’t saved the kid’s life those first few terrifying days; if anything, Chekov had saved his, and everyone else on board with his clever plan.

            Chekov quirked a grin. “You brought Captain Kirk to the Enterprise,” he said, and then waved a hand. “But, we can say I was injured in a fight with Nero’s men. I was shot.”

            McCoy gave him a disapproving look, lips pursed, and tried to bury the way his belly twisted to even think of Chekov taking a phaser bolt. “Where?”

            With a quick motion, Chekov set his PADD down on the floor and rolled so his position mirrored McCoy’s, and McCoy unconsciously shifted back a little. There was not enough space on the bed to get a comfortable amount of distance, not with Chekov facing him.

            “My right shoulder, from behind” Chekov answered, when he settled, eyes steady on McCoy’s. “I could have died.”

            McCoy closed his eyes and swallowed against the thought. “Never happen,” he said, more steadily than he expected. “There’s no scar, though.”

            “No, it healed perfectly,” Chekov agreed. “You are a very good doctor.”

            A soft sort of warmth flushed through McCoy at the praise, even though the injury was just a story. Even though all of this was just a story, just an echo of their shared history skewed with make-believe in order to protect them. The warmth faded, and McCoy let it, reminded himself that this was just what they had to do.

            “You were a terrible patient,” he contributed gruffly at last, because it was the opposite of the truth, gave him some way to separate their reality from the tall tale they were now spinning together. Maybe the kid would take the hint. “Asked a thousand questions and wouldn’t stay put on your biobed.”

            “It was very boring without you,” Chekov said, smiling in a way that completely ignored all of McCoy’s rough edges and ruffled feathers. “I asked you to dinner when you finally released me. You said no, but you showed up anyway.”

            McCoy snorted. That sounded too much like him, and he wondered when exactly Chekov had gotten to know him that well.

            Without prompting, Chekov continued. “I managed to coax one of the replimats into making us pelmeni for dinner, and you made me try tapioca pudding. It was a very good night.”

            “Pelmeni?” McCoy asked. He didn’t generally try to make the replicators make complicated dishes, as they tended to be fussy about even simple foods.

            Chekov thought for a moment. “It is… meat, encased in dough. It is very good. I will make it for you for real when we return home.”

            McCoy smiled a little, though it was empty of any warmth. Home seemed much too far away to be any comfort, and certainly not with Chekov promising to fulfill bits of their not-past with him. He closed his eyes, shuttering out the real world to listen to Pavel’s voice. Maybe it would be easier just to pretend for a little while. Maybe it would be better to let Pavel tell him all the things he didn’t dare tell himself.

            “Okay,” he said quietly. “What else?”

            He felt the bedding shift a little as Chekov relaxed beside him. “You asked me on a second date,” he said simply.

            And for a time, the soothing sound of Pavel’s voice, with its ever-thicker accent as he fell asleep, was all McCoy knew as he listened to him softly spin the tale of the life and love they’d never really had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really, really appreciate everyone's lovely comments. I wasn't sure what to expect jumping onto this ship and into its fandom, but it's been a very pleasant surprise so far! I hope that I can continue to please!


	4. The First Morning

 

            Consciousness came to McCoy slowly and in pieces, led by the steady march of his heartbeat in his temples. He crinkled his nose in disgust, covering his eyes with one arm and dragging himself from the depths of sleep with all the vigor of a dying hippopotamus. There were voices at his door, quiet and warm and although he recognized one of the voices, it was out of place in his room.

            Except that was not entirely true, he remembered.

            He cracked one eye open and shifted his arm enough to see down his body, past the foot of the bed, to where Chekov stood leaning against the edge of the doorway. Beyond him, someone else stood, chattering in an even, placid tone. A third voice piped up, and Chekov laughed, though McCoy couldn’t tell at what. He groaned and covered his eyes again.

            At his sound, the voices stopped. A shift of bodies, a clack of something hard, and then murmured goodbyes chased away the visitors. He listened to Chekov’s measured pace across the room, and roughed some kind of irritated noise when the bedding beside him dipped, shifting him with it. He was only vaguely aware of Chekov settling something on the bed between them.

            “What time is it?” he grumbled. He hated it, whatever time it was.

            “0600,” Chekov replied gently. He sounded like a morning person. McCoy hated morning people. Especially in the morning. “I have food.” It even _sounded_ like he was smiling.

            “Coffee,” he said, dread swooping at his belly as soon as the word was out of his mouth. These people probably created and shared all the chemicals their bodies needed, there was almost no chance they would have stimulant drinks.

            “Sorry,” Chekov said, his wince audible as he confirmed McCoy’s fear. “I asked, but it appears they do not have a coffee equivalent here.”

            The breathy puff of noise McCoy gave at that sounded pathetic even to his own ears. What a miserable, coffee-less existence. Maybe he would just stay in bed the rest of the day. Maybe he would stay in bed the rest of the month.

            “Leonard,” Pavel said patiently, and completely ignored McCoy’s answering grunt of _go away_. “There is breakfast, and fresh clothes. We are supposed to meet Oma and Aru in the med-wing in two hours.”

            He made some kind of noise to acknowledge he’d heard, and then held out his free hand for whatever kind of food the Telk had so thoughtfully brought to them. Chekov pressed something warm and kind of spongy into his hand, fingers trailing unnecessarily up the edge of his palm to close McCoy’s fingers around the item. When McCoy didn’t do anything but continue to try to breathe evenly, Chekov heaved a sigh.

            “Do you need help?” he asked, equal parts patronizing and amused.

            “I need coffee,” McCoy griped, but he uncovered his eyes and lolled his head to look at what food he’d been given. It was the same sort of blue puff from the night before, though arguably fresh enough to not actually be from dinner. There were a couple other items on the tray, which sat on top of a pile of fabric that looked like the same clothing all of the Telk wore. Chekov had half dressed in his fleet pants, no shirt, which meant they would both need to change clothing. He sighed.

            Chekov smiled indulgently and then straightened a bit. “Aru told me that the food changes its taste to suit the palate of its consumer. That is why everything last night tasted as good as it did. I suspect that the drinks do this as well. I very much doubt they were actually serving alcohol last night.”

            “Or sweet tea,” McCoy croaked, and wasn’t _that_ interesting, to think he’d wanted sweet tea more than a good shot of whiskey.

            His eyes ticked to the two steaming mugs sitting on the tray beside the food, undoubtedly filled with something that tasted like coffee with none of the accompanying caffeine. As he reached for one, he counted six ways he could poison Jim’s coffee as payback for stranding him here to survive on replica decaf. Three of them involved bringing some of the stuff back and making Jim drink it for a week.

            But that… that was something to think about, bringing some of the food back. If it was somehow capable of evolving its taste to suit the consumer, then perhaps they could use it to synthesize food for people with allergies. Maybe, if it worked, Jim could have some of the foods he bitched about missing. Maybe McCoy wouldn’t have to save him from himself every time he ate them anyway.

            He pondered this as he sat up, turning the puff over in his hands, and then took a bite. It was good, like a warm, buttery biscuit, though he found he couldn’t appreciate it with his mind still fuzzy. He chased it with a sip of the drink, which did taste remarkably like coffee after all, though smoother and sweeter than he normally liked; it went well with the taste of the not-biscuit.

            They ate in relative quiet, Pavel fiddling with a small device and McCoy lost in thoughts about how, in short order, the caffeine withdrawal headache would set in. He thanked God that for once his small med kit was full of things which were generally useful. There was at least one hypo that could deal with the incoming headache, which meant that he would suffer, but not greatly.

            Halfway through his second not-biscuit, Chekov noticed his scrutiny and passed him the small device. “What is it?” McCoy asked, flipping it over in his hand and taking another bite.

            “It builds,” Chekov said, like that explained anything.

            “Builds what?” McCoy asked, turning it back over to see the screen again.

            “Everything, I think,” Chekov said, then reached into McCoy’s space to tap the screen. “Well, this particular one does not, but others like it do. Did you see what they did to the tables last night?”

            “Yeah, they melted ‘em,” McCoy answered, squinting at the little screen and the symbol Chekov had put on it.

            “Close,” Chekov said, amused. “Gop and Fil, the two who brought breakfast to us, explained that all of this-“ he motioned to the room all around them, “is actually living.”

            McCoy nearly choked on his food. “We’re _inside_ of somethin’ alive?” he managed through a full mouth.

            “No, I don’t think so,” Chekov said quickly. “Not alive like an animal, more… living, like a tree. I believe it is some kind of living mineral. It responds to their chemical secretions so they can craft their surroundings- the tunnels, the tables, the chairs, the bed. This device mimics the chemicals so children can build before they can actually control their chemicals enough to do it themselves.”

            McCoy made a thoughtful noise and began flicking through the symbols stored in the device. Table. Chair. Chair. He had no idea what that one was. Wall. Possibly some kind of shelf. “There’s no bed,” he lamented, setting the thing back on the tray.

            Chekov gave a small, helpless shrug and picked up the device again. “Sorry, no,” he said, flicking through the symbols until he reached the one he was apparently looking for. “But I can make us a table to eat at, instead of our bed.”

            He fell still even as the words fell out of his mouth, blue eyes wide when they flicked up to catch McCoy’s. “Right,” McCoy forced out around the swoop of his belly, and this was ridiculous. He popped the last of the puff into his mouth and rolled out of the bed, snatching his towel up from where he’d dropped it the night before. “I’m going to wash up, unless you want to…?”

            “I did already,” Chekov said, watching him as he rounded the bed and headed for the bath. He smiled when McCoy turned to look at him in question, wondering when the hell he’d had time, and McCoy knew that sly little curl of his lips meant nothing good even before Chekov added cheekily: “I wanted to let the _old man_ sleep in.”

            McCoy threw his towel at Chekov’s head with a growl. “Not _that_ old.”

            Chekov broke into a bright peal of delighted laughter, and McCoy looked up to the ceiling with tight lips, having walked right into admitting exactly what Chekov had wanted. No matter how good that laughter made him feel, he was absolutely not going to smile… except that he sort of already was.

 

* * *

 

            The degree to which McCoy enjoyed the feel of Telk fabric against his skin _annoyed_ him. The garments they’d been given were softer than tribble fur and hung loose to ghost over his skin. He found it a small relief that the clothing was cut to touch much less skin than human clothing. This, however, left swaths of bare skin open to touch, open for seeing all the myriad colors the Telk changed. Unfortunately, _red_ was the only color McCoy could change, and he did so after donning the clothing, tugging and shifting the fabric around in an attempt to make it fit.

            And then suddenly it _had_.

            He’d blinked, looking up at Chekov, who had been watching him with a small, fond smile. “It adjusts, if you leave it alone,” he’d said.

            McCoy had scowled at the clothing and wished that there was one thing on this entire damnable planet that didn’t know what he wanted without even asking.

            “We are going to be late, Doctor,” Chekov had said softly, motioning with a tilt of his head toward the door.

            Careful what you wish for, McCoy had thought. He had led Chekov out of the room, offering up his hand as they walked, and the warm slide of Chekov’s palm against his was almost good enough to forget about coffee. Almost. At least they hadn’t had to go far to get to the medical wing.

            McCoy was not sure what he expected to find in the medical wing of the compound, but it was not the bustling center of activity they found upon arrival. There were Telk everywhere in the small hall cavern, pairs talking to other pairs, every different shade of a veritable rainbow, and McCoy had not the faintest clue how to tell any of them apart. Off to a great start, he’d thought, the moment before Oma had practically materialized to greet them.

            This, they explained, was treatment day.

            Treatment day, as it turned out, was the day all of the Telk in the compound came to the medical wing to receive what amounted to a physical and any vaccines for which they were due. Oma explained that the storm happened usually two to three times a year, forcing the entire settlement’s population underground. Rather than disrupt their day-to-day activities with routine medical check-ups, they chose to do so the first full day following the rise of a storm.

            “When so many gather so close, illness can spread quickly,” Aru had added, scanning over the pair in front of them while McCoy watched and learned. “This helps protect the colony.”

            Despite the distraction of his mounting headache, it didn’t take long for McCoy to learn what a standard, healthy set of readings looked like, or for Aru to teach him how to administer the small bulb of vaccine to the skin of a patient. McCoy marveled at their ability to absorb chemicals through their skin, and realized, with no small amount of dread, that they were probably more advanced on chemical communication than even he had concluded. Chekov seemed to realize this as well, if the uncertain look he gave McCoy after the first vaccine demonstration was anything to go by.

            Once they were certain McCoy had a handle on the basics, Oma shuffled the both of them off to a corner of the room where they could slowly help with the massive influx of Telk. This, _this_ was something McCoy knew, _this_ was something he could handle, and he set about the task with his usual attention to detail. It was almost easy to lose track of the time once he got into the pattern of scan, scan, apply vaccines as needed.

            Having a job to focus on gave him something to think about that was neither how close Chekov continued to stand to him or the growing pain anchored somewhere behind his eyes, in his temples, clawing around in his sinuses. He was so intent on ignoring everything but the immediate task at hand that he didn’t register the low, anxious trill running under the white noise of activity around them.

            “Sir,” Chekov said softly, drawing his attention after the two Telk McCoy had been vaccinating turned to leave.

            McCoy instantly went on alert at the tone, posture stiffening as he turned to look at Chekov. The trill had gotten louder, enough that McCoy actually noticed it throbbing at his withdrawal headache before Chekov said anything. “What happened?”

            Chekov gave a little, bewildered shrug, turning his attention back to the Telk. “They are upset,” he said, as if that was not obvious. “It started a while ago, maybe an hour. Just the staff, but the patients are…”

            “It’s catching,” McCoy mumbled, looking around for the source of the distress.

            Several of the Telk were openly staring back at him as he looked around, several more actively avoiding looking directly at him in a way that suggested they would very much like to do the opposite. They were obviously watching and waiting for something, and McCoy had the terrible feeling that he knew what that something was.

            Tentatively, McCoy reached out to brush his fingers against the edge of Chekov’s palm, and the intensity of the trill lowered fractionally. When Chekov started at the contact, and then threaded their fingers together in what felt like an automatic reaction, the noise cut out completely. McCoy sighed, still irritated despite the temporary relief the silence granted his headache.

            “This again,” he said under his breath.

            “It would seem so, sir,” Chekov agreed. “It is impractical to expect you to work with only one hand.”

            That wouldn’t exactly have been McCoy’s excuse, but he took it without argument and clambered to his feet. “C’mon, kid,” he said, keeping hold of Chekov’s hand as he weaved through the room to get to where he thought Oma and Aru were treating a pair of elderly Telk. One of them brightened considerably at his approach.

            “Oma?” McCoy asked, doing his level best to make it sound like he was both asking where they were and addressing them at the same time.

            The Telk shivered blue and then purple, and motioned to two stations over. “Omaru are there, Doctor.”

            It took McCoy a moment to realize the names had been mashed together, like Yewhara, and even as he looked, he briefly wondered what situations it was acceptable to refer to two Telk as one entity. He wondered if it held any further significance beyond citing a bonded pair. He didn’t have time to wonder anything else, as he spotted Oma and they were looking right back at him, a soft, pleased shade of pink swirling in blue. He performed the gesture of thanks to the Telk that had pointed them out, waited patiently while it was returned, and then tugged Chekov behind him again as he moved to Oma and Aru’s sides.

            “Doctor McCoy,” Oma and Aru both greeted as soon as he was within easy hearing range. They gestured to Chekov, the pink fading out of Oma’s blue to match Aru’s. “Lieutenant Chekov.”

            McCoy forced down the desire to immediately launch a game of twenty questions about what had just happened. “Oma, Aru,” he greeted in return, the names echoed in Pavel’s warm voice. “We did something to upset the others.”

            Sickly yellow suffused the blue of Oma’s skin, though it cleared just as quickly. Aru made a sort of impatient noise, and then laid a tentacled hand on their current pair of patients. The Telk gestured thanks, colors changing rapidly, and then they vacated the area as quickly as possible. At last, Aru turned to look at them both.

            “This is not the place to talk,” they said quietly, “with so many others to listen. We should speak before your midday food. You are hungry?”

            As soon as the words were spoken, McCoy realized he actually was hungry, and his headache had begun in earnest again despite the quiet. He wondered how many hours they’d been at this. He glanced to Chekov, who gave him a little look that said plain as day _they have a point_ and McCoy nodded. “Yeah, lunch sounds good.”

            Oma and Aru set their equipment down on the table and lead the way out of the medical hall. As soon as the doors melted shut behind them, Oma halted and turned to face them. McCoy tensed, sure that they were about to get some kind of reprimand, and had just enough time to make a dozen wrong guesses as to what they’d done before Oma spoke.

            “You are not touching,” Oma said firmly, and it was not quite a reprimand, but it left McCoy feeling like he had been lectured. Like Oma wanted them to understand what kind of trouble they were in, for not doing as expected. “It has been hours, and none have seen you touch at all. Is your bond failing? Are you unhappy? Are you ill?”

            “No!” Chekov rushed to say, before McCoy had even finished being astounded that anyone had paid that much attention to them. He’d been so wrapped up in treating patients that nothing else had even registered. “I did not want to interfere with Doctor McCoy’s work.”

            McCoy turned to goggle at Chekov, who just raised both eyebrows at him in a way that suggested he’d better hop to playing along. “I- well, it’s okay. I can work and touch at the same time.” He swallowed against the sudden sticky feeling of his throat and held up their joined hands as if either of them needed the reminder. “I need my hands, but there’s more ways to touch than holding hands, you know.”

            He absolutely must have imagined the tiny hitch in Chekov’s breath at the suggestion. “Then you want- it is okay for me to touch you while you work?” The soft, pink blush at the tips of Chekov’s ears was harder to ignore, though McCoy couldn’t blame him after a question like that.

            “It- it’s not a problem,” he said, lying through his teeth with a reassuring smile and a gentle squeeze of his hand. “I’ll manage.” That, at least, was not a lie. He could continue to work, regardless of almost any exterior commotion; Jim had made damn sure of that when they’d roomed together at the Academy.

            Oma studied both of them with a tight expression, eyes flicking back and forth between them, like maybe there was some crack in their façade. McCoy’s stomach dropped at the prospect of being found out already, but whatever Oma was looking for they either didn’t find it or chose not to comment. The yellow faded from their skin, replaced by a very purposefully neutral grey.

            “And you, Doctor?” they asked quietly. “You, of course, will remember to do the same?” Aru nudged at Oma’s arm and Oma straightened a little. “We do not want work here to interfere with forming your bond. You may go any time you need.”

            McCoy cleared his throat and looked to Chekov, not sure exactly how much of his desperation showed on his face. They had an audience- one that would not take kindly to the kind of questions McCoy needed to ask Chekov, wouldn’t understand _is this okay?_ and _only if you want_ and _we can stop any time_. He hoped the kid remembered their earlier conversation, at least.

            “Yes,” Chekov said softly, reaching right into the swirl of McCoy’s thoughts as he stared levelly back at him. “He will touch me, now that we know it is okay.” He pulled his gaze almost reluctantly from McCoy’s and turned to show a brilliant smile to Oma and Aru. “Maybe he will touch too much. He will be distracted for sure.”

            Both Telk turned a pleased shade of bright pink and made a high, silly noise that McCoy was beginning to suspect was laughter. “There is little more to do,” Oma assured Chekov in what could only be a conspiratorial tone. “After you have eaten midday food with Yewhara, you do not need to return to us.”

            “Midday food with Yewhara?” McCoy asked, tensing. He had not planned on seeing the Telk leaders again this soon, or at all if he thought he could avoid it. Every second he had spent around them so far had left him very, very uncomfortable. They were both sharp as scalpels- if anyone was apt to see through their lie, it was Yew and Hara.

            “Agree,” Aru said, turning a shade of burnt orange. “They have requested you to perform company at their home. We will take you there, do not worry.”

            “No one told us,” McCoy said, painting the words with cranky stubbornness to cover his concern.

            Both Telk tipped their heads and swirled with yellow and grey and orange, and then Oma cleared to mint green and Aru shifted a sickly green-grey. “Apologies,” Oma said softly. “Filgop should have told you when they brought you food. They are not very reliable.”

            “It is my fault,” Chekov assured them quickly. “They gave me a device to make a table, and I began to ask questions about Telk technology. It is fascinating that you created devices to mimic chemical signals.”

            A high, sharp trill escaped Oma at that, but they hunkered down and shifted bright yellow in silence just as quickly. Aru shifted to yellow more slowly, though they straightened and cleared to green before speaking. “The children required them,” they said evenly. “We helped Filgop create the devices.”

            “It is a very clever device for children,” Chekov said earnestly. “Is there more technology like it?”

            Oma’s yellow faded to a more tallow color, but Aru’s remained green. “The Telk have many technologies. Perhaps you can see some while you are here.”

            “I would like that very much,” Chekov said, smiling.

            “We will be late,” Oma interjected, their color clearing to pale green. “We must get you to Yewhara for midday food.”

            Chekov turned to follow, but McCoy planted his feet and held tightly to his hand as the Telk passed them. Oma turned to see why they had stopped, and McCoy forced a smile. “We need a moment alone.”

            Pink-purple chased at the heels of a deep, azure blue, and Oma leaned into Aru to direct them down the hall away from the humans. McCoy watched until he figured they were out of hearing range before wrapping long fingers around Pavel’s arm and pulling him to the side of the corridor. They couldn’t get out of sight, but it felt less exposed to have a wall close to one side of them.

            “We are in _trouble_ ,” he murmured, low and urgent, searching Chekov’s face for any sign that he understood. “Yew and Hara are not like the other Telk. If anyone’s going to guess… what’s going on, or what’s _not_ going on-“

            Chekov reached up and covered McCoy’s hand with one of his own, effectively silencing him. “We will be fine, Doctor,” he said, eyes ticking between McCoy’s for a second before he smiled. “We have been in worse situations.”

            “That’s not-“ McCoy held up a hand to stop himself, the tight pain behind his eyes making him wish he’d remembered the hypo he’d planned on using. This conversation would go so much better if he could just _think_ , but he knew he had to try anyway. “Look, kid, they’re going to expect us to act like- like we’re more than we are.” He didn’t miss the shadow that passed through Chekov’s eyes, or the tightness around the edges of his mouth at the suggestion.

            “I know this,” Chekov agreed stiffly, and then he seemed to pull himself together and met McCoy’s eyes again. “Passing as your mate for Yewhara will not be as difficult as you are imagining, Leonard. You are a doctor, more than capable of touching others when necessary, and we are both humans. Our bonding discrepancies can be explained as human traits. We will be alright. Unless you are trying to tell me you want to stop?”

            McCoy swallowed down the desire to say _yes we should stop this before it gets the kind of dangerous that will follow us home_ , and shook his aching head. “No, it’s fine. I just wanted to… ah, hell. Let’s just go, get this over with.”

            Chekov studied him for just a moment longer, and then let his hand slip off of McCoy’s, taking away the warmth of his touch. In the next instant, he splayed the same hand open, palm up, and McCoy’s own hand twitched in automatic response, ready to take it without thinking. Carefully, so carefully, he threaded their fingers and pressed his palm to Chekov’s and thought maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it was too late- this was already going to follow him home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I meant to have this out earlier this week, I've just been swamped. I'm so glad everyone seems to be enjoying this so far, and I really appreciate the encouragement <3


	5. Lunch with Leaders

 

 

 

            Pavel was not sure what he expected to find in a private Telk household, yet somehow what they found felt exactly right. When such things as tables and beds and even walls could be dissolved with a mere touch, it made sense to keep rooms bare, keep the entire dwelling limited in space because it could be anything the residents desired.

            So, much like their own single-room space, Yewhara’s residence had very little in it; a short wall to separate the bathing area to the right and a set of shelves to the left with what appeared to be personal effects. The only differences Pavel could see were a second set of shelves on the far wall which housed two short stacks of clothing, a larger pile of bedding on the bottom shelf that belonged to the absent bed, and the fact that the glowing lichen seemed to almost pulse with life, colors shifting in subtle patterns.

            Very little else about the dwelling individualized Yewhara from what they had seen of the rest of the community, and Pavel found that oddly comforting. Maybe Leonard was wrong about them being different, and they were not in as much trouble as he thought.

            “Thank you for your invitation,” Pavel told their hosts, once the door was closed behind them. Leonard’s hand was warm and tight on his, certainly more nerves than need. Pavel smiled anyway and leaned heavily into his space, increasing the contact just in case Leonard was right. Getting touchy with Leonard was certainly no chore- Pavel had wanted to get his hands on him in return ever since the first time the good doctor had patched him up with deft, gentle fingers.

            One of the two Telk, and Pavel was not sure which was which yet, turned a pretty shade of lavender. “We are pleased you could attend,” they said quietly. “We thought perhaps Omaru would keep you all day. Treatment day is very busy for them.”

            It was strange, to hear Standard spoken with such fluency after hearing it so slow and mixed up the rest of the day. Even Omaru, as talented as they were with the language, sounded a little off, picked just a few wrong words or placed them in the wrong order. Truthfully, it made Pavel feel a little better to know someone else found Standard as clunky as he sometimes did.

            Leonard cleared his throat and forced a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Omaru seem to have everything under control, though,” he said firmly, sounding testy. Perhaps his headache had gotten worse. Pavel stroked a soothing hand down his arm, promising himself he would make Leonard take something for it when they returned to their room. “They’re very good at what they do.”

            “Yes,” they agreed. “Even Hara no longer questions their placement.”

            “They belong,” said Hara from where they were crafting chairs around a freshly-made table. Pavel tried to find the differences in them, but, like all of the Telk, they appeared outwardly identical, even wearing the exact same oyster-colored clothing. “It is good they came here.”

            Pavel pulled away slightly to look at Leonard, only to find Leonard already looking at him, but he had no answers. As far as he had known, Omaru were from this settlement. The reports had read that there was no observable interaction between the various settlements around the planet.

            “They’re not from here?” Leonard asked, looking back at the Telk slowly, as though reluctant to tear his gaze away. Pavel stared a moment longer than strictly necessary, and then pressed himself back into Leonard’s side. Because they were supposed to be close. For the mission.

            “No,” Yew said, touching the blank wall between the two sets of shelves. A small opening appeared, cupboard sized, to reveal two covered platters and a small basket with utensils. Pavel blinked, looking around at the rest of the room and wondering what else was simply hidden from view. The thought did not make him comfortable for reasons he could not quite put his finger on.

            “We found them,” Hara added, finally finished with the chairs. They gestured to two of the seats in invitation before turning to help Yew bring the food and settings to the table. “They were very young, maybe only one hundred years, but very closely bonded.”

            Pavel’s brows rose at that. He had assumed that since Telk bonded at only one year old, they were a short-lived species, but if a century was still young, perhaps they had lifespans more like Vulcans. He would be sure to note it in his report rather than press the issue now. “You took them in,” he concluded. “They were lost?”

            “No,” Hara said, turning a deep orange the same time as Yew, who reached to briefly brush hands with Hara. “We do not know what sector they left, but they did leave. It made many of us very uncomfortable, but we decided to allow them to stay.”

            “Is it unusual, leaving like they did?” Pavel asked. “Your communities- ah, sorry, sectors, we were told that they do not exchange members.”

            Yewhara changed the pretty pink-purple of amusement in tandem as he and Leonard took their seats. Hara had made them close enough that they were nearly connected, making it easy for them to stay in contact.

            “Not singularly,” Yew replied, which seemed obvious the moment they said it. “There is a gathering once every twelve years, where all of the sectors come together. Telk do not always return to their home sector afterward. Some that had gone before come home again. In this way, as a group, we trade information and genetics.”

            Leonard made a noise of surprise that echoed how Pavel felt. Perhaps that was why the initial report had read that there seemed to be no exchange of any kind between the segregated Telk communities around the planet. Given what they had discovered about the nature of the chemical bonds formed within communities, it seemed strange that they would accept rearranging the populations, but clearly it was acceptable on rare occasion.

            “Doesn’t that upset your-“ Leonard waved a hand in a gesture that could not possibly have meant anything to the Telk, and Pavel hid a smile, “chemical balance, or something?” It was gratifying to know Leonard’s mind was on the same path.

            Yew set one of the platters down at the center of the table and Hara placed the other beside it. “Yes,” Yew said as they took a seat across from Pavel. Hara settled in beside Yew and uncovered the closest platter. It was some kind of meat, or resembled it closely enough. “But it is necessary. Stagnant populations produce… _anomalies_.”

            Pavel’s belly swooped the same moment Leonard’s hand tightened on his, and he squeezed back. Anomalies. Abominations, according to their tone of voice, and to the wash of angry red that flashed across Yewhara’s skin. They _had_ to mean the white Telk, which meant that Leonard had been right after all; they were in trouble. They were an anomaly just waiting to be caught.

            “Anomalies?” Pavel echoed as if he had no idea, wanting to at least know more about what they were up against. Perhaps knowing what Yewhara would look for would help them to avoid being found out, if they were quick to adapt.

            Hara made a dismissive noise and changed a pleasant shade of blue, though the color change was off somehow, sticky and swirled instead of ambient. “It is not a problem here,” they said evenly, looking between the humans in the same sharp way Mr. Spock would sometimes observe the Captain when he thought the Captain was doing something particularly human. “Our sector only very rarely produces such anomalies, close to the gathering time, and Omaru have dealt with such problems swiftly, as is their job.”

            Pavel turned his head to look at Leonard, eyes catching, and he could tell he was not the only one feeling the cold burn of fear prickling at his skin. They had spent all day in the company of the two responsible for killing the children that did not fit in. He curled his fingers more tightly around Leonard’s, grateful beyond words that he was not alone down here.

            “It is nothing for you to worry over. We do not gather together for another ten years,” Yew added, uncovering the second platter. “But come, let us not discuss such matters when there are more pleasant ones. We requested something special for midday food with you. Roast kaltha and greens.”

            At the strange motion Yew made, Leonard extracted his hand from Pavel’s to select a slice of the meat. Pavel rubbed his hand once across his thigh, already missing the warmth of Leonard’s skin, and gave a softer smile when Leonard looked over at him this time. They were fine. They could do this. He hoped it showed.

            Though he considered serving himself, he waited just long enough to allow the doctor to put a slice of the meat on his plate as well, something Pavel had observed Telk pairs doing for one another at dinner. Pavel thanked him, low and earnest, and leaned into his side for just a couple of heartbeats. Leonard stiffened the tiniest bit at the contact, and Pavel tried not to let it get to him, turning his attention instead to their hosts.

            “Will the food not just change its flavor?” he asked. He was not sure what the point of preparing different foods was, if they all just altered themselves to an ideal taste, but he supposed that there had to be foods that did not. Taste baselines and preferences had to come from somewhere for the Telk.

            The two Telk brightened to the exact same shade of purple-pink, and Hara began to put servings on their own plates. “Not this food,” they said. “It is special, something to show you the flavors of our world. Amanda enjoyed the kaltha immensely.”

            “But not Jacob?” Pavel inquired, waiting until the two had what food they would take before pulling a piece of his meat free to try. It was sweet, much sweeter than any meat Pavel had ever tasted, with an undercurrent of rich, earthy flavor. He made a noise of appreciation low in his throat.

            “Ah, Jacob… did not consume animals,” Yew said, making a kind of strange face, more expressive than most Telk seemed to be, even though Pavel was not sure what the expression meant. “But Jacob enjoyed the greens. Are they to your liking?”

            Beside him, Leonard carefully focused on chewing a bite of the steamed greens, a mixture of plants probably akin to root vegetables, and nodded along with Pavel. The Telk changed colors, several of them in rapid succession, and began to eat as well. For a short while, they found a companionable sort of silence, hands and mouths and attentions busied with the meal at hand. It was only when their plates were empty, Pavel pushing around a last, square piece of meat, that anyone spoke again.

            “Do you have plans yet for tomorrow?” Hara asked curiously, glancing between them.

            Pavel blinked and looked up at the odd question. Leonard looked just as confused when Pavel shot him a quirked brow, no doubt thinking the same thing. They were guests here, and more than a little at the whim of their hosts for how little they knew about this culture. However, Pavel was not about to say as much, so he popped a large piece of vegetable matter into his mouth and smiled around it to Leonard. The little eye roll was completely worth the cheek.

            “We figured we’d be working with Omaru again,” Leonard told them, sounding put out. His headache must really be getting to him, to leave him so cranky. Pavel felt badly for him; he almost never drank coffee, himself, but he knew exactly what it could do to long time users who quit abruptly. None of it was pleasant. “There seemed to be a lot to do.”

            Yewhara paled in unison, and Yew leaned forward to speak quietly. “They should not work tomorrow,” they said, like a lecture, like a reprimand.

            Hara leaned in closer as well, shoulder brushing Yew’s. “Did they tell you they would?”

            “No,” Leonard said tersely, confusion scrawled all over the lines of his face. “They’ve been so busy we haven’t gotten a chance to talk. I assumed they would continue to be busy tomorrow, with so many patients to see.”

            “Oh no, no,” Yew said, making motions with both hands before settling, skin clearing to a soft green. “It is a day of rest, no Telk will work on this day. You, also, are not required or requested to be anywhere. However, there will be many social gatherings in all of the gathering caverns. Of course, we will understand if you would rather spend your day with one another, alone.”

            Pavel cleared his throat to hide a smile when Yew turned a soft shade of pink at their own implication. He had gotten the distinct impression that Telk discussed sex and affection the way humans discussed the weather, and every time anyone remotely brought it up, Leonard had enough American Southern Gentleman ingrained in him to squirm. It was… endearing, even if Pavel felt badly for him on that front as well.

            Pavel, on the other hand, had no such reservations. “Perhaps it is best we are not left alone so long,” he said smoothly, flicking a glance to Leonard to see his breath go soft in exasperation. Pavel smiled politely to their hosts and reached out to lay a hand on Leonard’s shoulder, felt him tense a little, and recognized the boundary he was pushing enough to stop at that.

            Hara looked over the both of them, searching, and then turned back to their food. “Did Omaru show you the way to the food cavern, where dinner was hosted for you yesterday?”

            “Yes,” Leonard said tartly, in the exact same tone he used when the Captain had a particularly obstinate moment.

            Pavel started to withdraw his hand, just in case he was the cause, but Leonard shifted just a fraction closer to stop him and _that_ set Pavel on edge. Leonard would not seek to stay in physical contact unless he thought they were in danger without it. With Hara watching them so closely, Pavel pressed a little harder, dragged his hand down Leonard’s arm rather than let go, and shifted to lean against him instead, relishing the warm, solidness of the doctor.

            That, he thought, should be close enough. He would have to climb into his lap to get any closer.

            Hara slowly shifted from polite green-grey to a soft blue. “Our young will gather there for most of the day, if you would like to come help watch over them. Many of them asked about the visiting humans today.”

            “Yes!” Pavel said excitedly, remembering at the last second not to burst up away from Leonard.

            Leonard boggled sideways at him, and Pavel raised his eyebrows, hoping that the doctor would catch on quickly. Children would not be as interested in their state of bonding, and since they did not produce the chemicals necessary to do such things as build from the living rock, Pavel guessed they would not be able to monitor chemical output, either. He and Leonard might actually get a chance to relax and just spend some time together without stress.

            “I… I like children,” he added for good measure, which was actually not a lie.

            He risked another glance at Leonard to see what he thought of the admission, and was met with a soft, considering look. He smiled, more than a little relieved to have even that small amount of approval. Though he had known Leonard had a daughter he never saw, Pavel had not known whether that was by choice or by circumstance. Now, he figured it must be circumstance, and he was glad for it. Briefly, he pressed against Leonard a little more firmly, and smiled.

            Across from them, both Telk turned hot pink and seemed to almost scrunch up. “It is good,” Yew said warmly. “Your young will have good parents.”

            Leonard choked on his drink, spluttering as he tried to catch his breath, and Pavel laid a hand on his back. “Doctor?” he asked, and Leonard waved him off, taking small, sharp breaths through his coughs.

            “Do you require medical attention?” Hara asked, the same bright shade of yellow as Yew. “Has our food injured you?”

            “No,” Pavel said, feeling the pull of breath beneath his hand. He forced a smile for the Telk. Of course they would not understand choking; though they could direct air through their throats for speaking, they breathed directly into their chests from small openings near their clavicle. “Our breathing tubes are located next to our eating tubes. Sometimes food or drink or air goes down the wrong one. He will be okay.”

            The Telk both held themselves uncertainly, tight and yellow and leaning into one another, as they waited for Leonard to finish coughing. Pavel ran a hand soothingly over Leonard’s back for a few more seconds. When he straightened, he still cleared his throat a few times and looked like he wanted to continue coughing but knew better.

            “I’m fine,” he rasped at last.

            “We did not realize humans were so fragile,” Hara said carefully, finally pulling apart from Yew’s side a little. “Is there anything we can do to prevent this from happening?”

            Pavel caught his laugh halfway out of his throat, coughing to cover it before realizing what a terrible idea that was as both Telk turned bright yellow again in alarm. He smiled brightly to reassure them. “It is fine,” he said quickly. “This is something which happens sometimes to humans. I believe you surprised Leonard with talk of young.”

            Cool, minty green spread over the Telk in an instant, chased off by a sweet, milky blue. Their color transitions were much softer and smoother than Omaru’s, and Pavel found himself forming a theory that the manner of color change was how Telk told one another apart from a distance. Perhaps, he thought, it was as unique to them as human facial features were to humans.

            “Yes, you are still soft bonds,” Yew agreed. “But I think your bond will take. You are very close, for a pre-copulated pair.”

            Leonard stifled a pained groan and drew in a deep breath, seeming to pull himself together. Before Pavel could move one way or another, Leonard was reaching behind Pavel to wrap an arm around him, hand settling warm on the curve of his shoulder. And as _nice_ as that was – and it was very, very nice, he thought – Pavel could see the strain under Leonard’s forced smile. It seemed he was having a very difficult time with all of this, more so than Pavel, which only served to remind Pavel that this was supposed to be strictly a necessity. A mission. A survival tactic.

            “It’ll take,” Leonard assured them, thumb running hot over Pavel’s skin, bare in the borrowed Telk clothing. Pavel’s breath went soft in his chest, body lighting up at the contact, at Leonard’s initiation of it. “It’s new but… we’ll be okay.”

            This, Pavel knew was directed at him, Leonard’s tone changing pitch just enough to communicate the shift. “Yes,” he echoed, sounding a little breathless and drawing Leonard’s full attention. “We’ll be okay.”

            He looked askance at Leonard just in time to catch the relieved smile, and then Leonard’s hand shifted up, those sure fingers gliding smoothly up to graze over the juncture of shoulder and neck. Though it had to be meant to reassure him, all it did was send a jolt of pleasure down his spine so hard he actually gasped and curled away from the intensity of the touch.

            “Sorry,” he breathed, even as he did, even as Leonard jerked his hand away as though burned, and Pavel could have kicked himself. He could not explain anything in front of their hosts, may have ruined what credibility they had gained by coming here together. His mind _raced_ to come up with an excuse that would not seem too much like a lie. “It- that tickled!”

            Leonard gave him a sharp, confused look, probably knew damn well that _tickled_ was not the reaction he had just elicited, and they both knew that if the Telk could tell they had never had sex, they could probably tell it was not just _tickled_ , either. If not now then soon, given Pavel’s state of _very_ sudden arousal.

            “Tickled?” Yew questioned in unison with Hara.

            Eyes still glued to Pavel, Leonard explained automatically. “It’s an uncontrolled nerve reaction humans have to being touched in certain places.” Pavel met his eyes, and Leonard’s brows rose a little in question. “Most people don’t like it.”

            “I like it,” Pavel said quickly, because he knew what he was really being asked. He was _fine_ , better than fine, but he knew what boundaries Leonard wanted to keep. He dipped his chin a little in what could have been chagrin if he had actually felt any. “Too much, maybe.”

            “Oh,” McCoy said at the same time the Telk turned from a mildly alarmed banana-flesh yellow to a vibrant magenta and began to trill.

            “You should return to Omaru,” Hara said, voice finally warm and pleasant, as though the distinct discomfort of both humans had convinced them of the truth. “We must return to the center. Do you know the way?”

            “Yes,” Leonard lied before Pavel could say no, and that was probably a wiser decision. An escort beyond the exit would mean no opportunity to speak alone, and Pavel desperately needed that as soon as possible. “We are thankful for the chance to share midday food with you,” he added for good measure, accompanying the sentiment with the Telk gesture of gratitude.

            Hara returned it in unison with Yew, purple shimmering beneath their pink now. “We are pleased to have had your company,” they said. “If you have need of us, we are never far.”

            As they extracted themselves from the chairs and all but bolted for safety, Pavel tried not to think about how vaguely threatening that dismissal sounded.

           

* * *

           

            As luck would have it, they did not get even a full minute of time alone until well after dinner. The door had barely closed behind them at Yewhara’s before Omaru were rounding the corner, their greys changing several times before settling on a similar shade of blue. Oma had told them that they had intended to check in before going back to work, in case they did not remember the way. Yewhara were very busy, after all, Aru had added, and it sounded like some kind of lie even through the cultural barrier, but neither Leonard nor Pavel was willing to call them on it after what they had learned at lunch.

            So despite their best intentions, Pavel and Leonard ended up back at the medical center, wedged again into their corner of the room to check and vaccinate as many Telk as possible before the end of the day. Leonard was testy the entire time; not with Pavel, though he could tell that was a gargantuan effort. He hoped it was just the headache and exhaustion from Leonard’s caffeine withdrawal, and not that he was upset over anything that had happened during lunch.

            For his part, Pavel tried to keep quiet and entertain himself observing the various Telk pairs that came through their station. He watched their colors change and looked for differences in the patterns, in the way the colors shifted, but by the fourth hour, he was pretty sure that Omaru were nearly alone in their ability to change multiple colors simultaneously.

            There were any number of reasons why that might be; a lack of control or a fine-tuned control, a product of their profession, or possibly even a regional difference. Knowing what he knew now regarding their origins, the last seemed the most likely. There were, over the course of the eight hours after lunch, at least three other pairs that Pavel saw changing in ways counter to the more ambient suffusion of color that seemed typical of this sector. Two pairs streaked like wiping a piece of glass with cleaner, and the other pair, medical staff like Omaru, swirled like mixing ink into water.

            It was strange and, to borrow a scientific term from Mr. Spock, _fascinating_.

            As keen as he was on observing others, he knew that he and Leonard were also under observation, perhaps even more since they returned from their visit with the leaders of the sector. He did his best to extend some amount of contact to Leonard, when it would not interfere with his work. The brush of fingers over a shoulder blade here, the bump of an elbow there, the press of his thigh alongside of Leonard’s whenever they both sat down for a minute. He wanted to be sure Leonard knew he did not blame him for anything, was not upset at all.

            Leonard, for all that he seemed wrapped up in his work, managed to pay equal if grudging attention to Pavel in return. His touches were hesitant returns in the first couple of hours but grew to almost absent-minded reciprocation as time went on. He made sure to brush hands whenever instruments or vaccines traded hands, leaned back into the hand Pavel rubbed over his shoulders, slipped his warm, broad palm over Pavel’s thigh when Pavel pressed their legs together while sitting. Pavel stayed quiet through it all, hoping not to scare Leonard off the way he had at lunch.

            By the time either of them realized the flood of Telk had trailed off to a trickle, Pavel was practically crawling out of his skin. Between the boring, repetitive activity and the excess of touch that was both too much and not enough, he just wanted to get out of the medical center and back to their room and be done with the day. Thankfully even as he was thinking it, Leonard stood and stretched and shot him a questioning look to make sure he was ready to go.

            They had politely said their good nights to Oma and Aru, assuring them that they knew the way, and come back to their room. Leonard had waved Pavel into the bath first after Pavel needlessly reminded him to find the hypo they’d both forgotten that morning. Pavel left him to rummage irritably in his med kit alone, not wanting to risk hitting any nerves until after Leonard started to feel better..

            “Take your time,” Leonard had told him absently as Pavel was shucking his loose, flowing shirt and toeing off his boots. “I want to get today written up before I forget anything.” Pavel just barely caught the first mutterings of _topical vaccines_ before Leonard settled on the edge of the bed. The quiet hiss of the hypo was the last sound before the doctor fell silent, glued intently to his PADD.

            So Pavel had done exactly that- taken his time, luxuriating in the pleasant sensation of a real water bath, letting the warmth seep into every atom. The sonic showers, while technically cleaner and absolutely more efficient, were not _warm_. Perhaps worse, they lacked the silky feel of water over skin, the heavy feeling afterward of water-soaked skin and hair, the sense of peace that came with closing his eyes and feeling a little weightless in a way outer space never could.

            It was, he thought, unfortunate that he could not enjoy the best part of a hot shower or bath here, not with Leonard still in the room, not with Leonard still uncomfortable with even casual touching. Pavel could not say for sure how Leonard would react to him lying naked and spread-eagle on the bed to let the bath-earned heat radiate off of him until he cooled, but he suspected it would be without grace.

            Instead, he clambered out of the bath and wrapped himself in a towel and pulled on the clean clothing that had been left for them both while they were away for the day. Leonard stayed seated on his own side of the bed as the tub drained, brow scrunched up and lip between his teeth over whatever he was reading. Pavel stared quietly at him for a long few moments, eyes tracing over the lines of that strong body, the way his hair stuck up from running his fingers through it while he read, the curve of his neck where it lay exposed by the minimalistic Telk clothing.

            He reached up, ran soft fingers over the edge of his own throat, where Leonard had touched so innocently at lunch. It did not feel the same.

            “Leonard,” he said, smiling a little when Leonard jumped and looked owlishly at him, clearly lost in his own head. At least Pavel was not the only one to do that. “The bath is ready.”

            “Yeah,” Leonard said, very carefully not looking directly at Pavel now that his attention had been drawn. “Okay, good.”

            “What were you reading?” Pavel asked as Leonard tossed the PADD down onto the covers and skirted around the end of the bed toward the bath.

            Leonard made some kind of thoughtless, distracted noise, and pulled his shirt over his head. Pavel absolutely watched, soaking in the view until Leonard caught him at it. “Writing,” Leonard said gruffly, which was no protest, so Pavel did not stop. “We don’t have topical vaccines, but the technology might be adaptable for humans.”

            “Ah,” Pavel said, finally turning away when Leonard hesitated, fingers at the hem of his pants. “You think this would be better than a hypo?”

            “Well, yeah,” Leonard said, shuffling to start the water to fill the tub again. “Lotta folks still scared of needles. Some have bad reactions to injections. Hypos take training to use, but anyone can put on a cream.”

            He listened to the other man splashing into the still-filling tub, and then laid back on the bed, tucking his toes under the covers to keep them from getting chilled. It had been a long, strange day, and he was ready to just bury himself in blankets and fall asleep. He could not, and he knew that well enough, but he also could not talk to Leonard about anything truly important while Leonard was lying naked in a bathtub not three meters away from him. He could wait.

            Mostly.

            By the time Leonard climbed out of the tub and had dried and changed, Pavel was practically dozing, eyes closed and mind liquid with almost-sleep. He felt the bed dip a little as the other man climbed in, and he made a muzzy noise and attempted to pry his eyelids open again.

            “Leonard,” he said, the word sticky and low.

            “Sorry, kid, didn’t mean to wake you,” Leonard apologized, more tender than Pavel had ever heard him, though he still sounded a little strained. “Go back to sleep, lieutenant.”

            “Wunn’t sleeping. Waiting f’you.” Pavel slurred and then in the most herculean of efforts, managed to open his eyes and roll to look at Leonard, head clearing a little as he remembered _why_ he had been staying awake. “And you should not call me lieutenant. You will give us away if you say this out of our room.”

            Leonard was quiet for a long, tense moment, and then said hesitantly, as though testing the word: “Chekov…”

            “Pavel,” Pavel corrected with a sleepy smile. “And I will call you Leonard.”

            “You already call me Leonard,” he griped.

            “It is your name, is it not?” Pavel asked. When there was no response, he sighed. “But that is not what I wanted to discuss.”

            “Yeah,” Leonard said, sounding a little breathless in a bad way, like he thought Pavel was about to lay into him the way Leonard often laid into the Captain or Mr. Spock. “About, uh… about lunch. Look, I’m-“

            “I was surprised,” Pavel said before he had to hear Leonard’s apology. He did not _want_ Leonard to be _sorry_. He wanted him to want to do it again. He sighed, glad that the lichen lighting the room were dim at this hour, glad the low light would hide the blush crawling under his skin. “I don’t mind, it felt very good, too good, so perhaps you…” He hesitated, not really wanting to put this forward but knowing he must. “Perhaps you should not touch me there again. I do not want to make you uncomfortable with such reactions.”

            “Yeah, didn’t mean to do… that,” Leonard said, a little more steady, a little more hoarse, and if it had been any other situation at all, Pavel might have found that tone attractive. “I won’t be doing it again any time soon.”

            Pavel _hated_ to hear it, wished he could just say _please do it again_ , wanted to beg him to do it again, and to not stop there. He wanted to know that, rather than being embarrassed and put off, Leonard would enjoy Pavel pressing into his touches. That Leonard would want to hear exactly how much Pavel wanted him to never stop touching him.

            “Thank you,” was what popped out of his mouth instead, because it should, because that was appropriate behavior for a starship navigator and his CMO. “But, the rest…” He trailed off, not sure where he meant to go with it, except that he wanted Leonard to know they could still touch.

            “We can stop, if you want,” Leonard offered. “If today was too much.”

            “It was not,” Pavel said quickly, maybe too quickly. A flush warmed his cheeks and gave his heart a solid thump. “It was… very nice, actually.” That was as obvious as he was willing to be with Leonard barely half a meter from him and listening with all that intense attention.

            “Yeah,” Leonard said roughly, maybe an agreement, and then rolled onto his back, putting just enough space between them to leave Pavel aching to close it up again. “Don’t know if it’ll be good enough.”

            “You mean what Yew said,” he said softly, barely daring. After Yew had revealed that Telk were sensitive enough to know that they had not consummated their non-existent bond, he had worried the same. Things could get complicated, one way or another. Of course Leonard was smart enough to recognize that. “About sex.”

            Leonard made a small noise of affirmation. “We might still have to leave.”

            “It is only sex,” Pavel said, because sometimes his mouth was the only thing in the galaxy faster than his brain. He swallowed, belly dropping as Leonard’s wide-eyed gaze swooped back to him. “What I mean is that if we must choose between risking the storm or... ah, or _performing_ , then it is only sex. They will look for the chemicals, not the act, Doctor.”

            The moniker seemed to have the desired effect, to remind Leonard that he was a doctor, more than capable of handling bodies, including his own, if necessary.

            Leonard’s face did several things Pavel did not recognize, and then he just frowned. “You think we can fool them.”

            “I think we have been,” Pavel said simply. “Even in this, I think it will be easy to fool their senses, as long as we do not hate each other.” He hoped the joke, however small, would bring a little levity to the conversation. “And I do not hate you, Leonard. Do you hate me?”

            There was the frown again, this time crinkling up his eyebrows in a way that suggested he was confused how Pavel could even ask that. “No, of course I don’t hate you, kid. I just…”

            “Don’t love me,” Pavel finished for him, unable to help the rueful smile that curled at the corners of his lips. What a shame. He had known, of course, but it still pained him to hear. “It will not matter. Love is only chemicals. Serotonin, dopamine...”  He yawned, covering his mouth with one hand until it passed. “Norepinephrine. We can make these other ways. We will be okay.”

            Even as he tugged the covers up to snuggle into them, surreptitiously scooting a little closer to Leonard to close up some of that gap, Leonard said his name. It sounded like an apology, or maybe an argument, and Pavel was done with both of those things for the night. Maybe for the rest of their stay. Maybe forever.

            “Go to sleep, Leo,” he chided softly, dismissing any further discussion.

            Leonard remained tense for a few more minutes, staring up at the ceiling as the lichen light slowly, slowly faded toward inky blackness. Pavel stayed wired to his every motion until he heard him let out a heavy breath. On the edge of sleep, though he could not be totally sure, he heard Leonard whisper _goodnight, Pavel._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I was pretty nervous about writing in Pavel's head for the first time, but it turns out, I really enjoy being in Pavel's head, he's a very pleasant human being. I hope that you enjoyed it as well!


	6. The Day of Rest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE BE WARNED: This chapter's opening scene is a description of a nightmare. If you would like to skip the italicized scene, I will add a simple description at the end of the chapter that you can boop down to see instead.

 

 

 

            _He can feel Jim dying under his blood-slick hands, hear the rattle in his lungs, and there’s nothing he can do, no tools he can use to save him, no tools to save any of the others shouting around him._

_Too late, too late._

_They’re right there and they’re dying and there’s nothing he can do._

_Useless. Helpless._

_Jim’s life is slipping through his numb, fumbling fingers._

_Not enough._

_Without his tools, without technology, Leonard McCoy is not enough._

_They are cold and dead around him and he couldn’t save them._

_Leonard McCoy alone is not enough._

_Jim breathes out, and does not breathe in again._

_Alone._

_“You’ve lost them. You’ll lose them all. They’ll all leave you, one way or another.” And it’s Jim’s voice, and Spock’s, and Sulu’s and Uhura’s and Scotty’s and-_

“Leonard.”

_-and Chekov’s, above the others, different. Alive._

_There is warmth in the darkness, coiling around his stiff fingers, threading through the in-between until he can feel them again. Steadiest hands in the galaxy, slick with blood, splayed over Jim’s broken chest._

_Alone. They are dead, they are gone, and he is alone._

“You are not alone, Leonard.”

            _Leonard’s heart beats like thunder under his skin._

“I am here. I will not leave. Sleep.”

            _Jim breathes._

* * *

 

            McCoy struggled into wakefulness, head pounding anew but _less_ for a night of sound sleep. He cracked open his eyes, thankful that there was no sunlight underground, just the soft, blue-green glow of the lichen coating the interior of their room. Next to him curled Chekov, face still relaxed in sleep, keeping the same distance as they’d had when they fell asleep. He was in almost the exact same position, - something McCoy remembered as a habit he’d had at the Academy as well – except…

            Except that both of his hands were wrapped around one of McCoy’s, one warm palm on either side of his, fingers threaded into and over his own like a cage.

            McCoy let out a shaky breath and for just a moment, allowed himself to indulge in the sensation of Pavel’s unconscious touch, of the soft way the young man cradled his hand like it was something precious, something to protect. He wondered if he’d woken the kid, knew that he sometimes had nightmares, sometimes called out in his sleep, but he never remembered anything about them. Almost never, anyway, and the rest of the time, well… humans invented alcohol for a reason.

            Not ready to break the illusion, but also not willing to risk Chekov waking up and catching him staring so openly, he finally murmured, “Pavel…”

            Chekov’s eyes cracked open at his name, and McCoy realized he had miscalculated just how far gone he was on the kid when a completely unguarded smile stole onto Chekov’s lips.

            “Good morning, Leonard,” Chekov greeted, voice low and rougher than McCoy had ever heard it, and that set a heat low in his belly.

            Something of how he felt must have shown on his face, because when he shifted his hand, Chekov let go as if burned, the same way he jerked away when McCoy had touched his neck at lunch. McCoy tamped down on how much that hurt and reminded himself that of course Chekov wouldn’t want McCoy touching him. At least, not in ways that could make him make _that_ noise again, the one that was going to haunt McCoy long after they got back home.

            Briefly, Chekov scrubbed at his face and then sat up, scratching at his bare chest, and McCoy realized that he had lost his shirt at some point in the night. He swallowed and rolled to face away from the other man.

            “It is the day of rest,” Chekov prompted as he got to his feet. “We should maybe go see what the Telk do for recreation. We did promise to visit their children.”

            McCoy groaned and closed his eyes again. Kids.

            _I like children_.

            He sighed, remembering the soft admission the day before, and how warm his chest had felt when Pavel smiled at him. Just for that one smile, they hadn’t been Dr. Leonard McCoy and Lt. Pavel Chekov. They had just been Leonard and Pavel, connecting over children- over the child he wasn’t sure Chekov even knew he had. He had wondered what Joanna would think of Pavel, but he was pretty sure they would get along. Without any logical reason to hope so, he hoped anyway.

            “Yeah,” he groused, trying to find the motivation to roll the rest of the way to his feet. At least his head was not a clamor of pain and regret and shiftless need for caffeine. The day might actually be tolerable.

            Chekov stood still on the other side of the room and McCoy knew he was staring, but he didn’t roll over to check, just waited for whatever it was. A rustle of fabric, the familiar click of his medkit opening, and then a small, hard object bounced off his back to land on the bed behind him. Before he even reached to grab it, he knew it was the second of the three mild painkiller hypos.

            His heart tightened up at the consideration, enough that he chanced a glance at Chekov as he pressed the small tube to his carotid. It pricked and hissed and a moment later, the pounding lessened to a much more tolerable degree. “Thanks,” he said, more relieved than he meant but still less than he felt.

            Chekov smiled and grabbed up his shirt to wriggle back into it. He fussed with the hem as McCoy lay there relishing the quiet, and then said: “You had a nightmare.”

            McCoy’s breath stuck. Of course he’d guessed, had woken with that vague feeling of something unpleasant having passed, but he had hoped that was all it was. Had hoped that Chekov coiled up around his hand was a factor of something more pleasant. Had hoped, at least, that Chekov wouldn’t remember _why_ he was holding McCoy’s hand through the night.

            “That is why I-“ He gestured with both hands, and McCoy realized he was trying to explain, that he must have thought McCoy was displeased. “It seemed to calm you.”

            “That- that was fine,” McCoy forced out past the tightness in his chest. “Actually, thank you. It probably did help. Having someone around usually does.” He hadn’t had anyone sleeping in his bed since the Academy, since Jim used to crawl into the wrong bunk and wrap himself around McCoy like a damn octopus before passing out cold. He’d never admit to missing it, but he missed it.

            “It is common?” Pavel asked, concern softening his eyes and drawing his brows close.

            McCoy shrugged and finally sat up, scrubbing a hand through the mess of his hair. “Probably,” he said. “I don’t remember them.”

            Chekov remained silent until McCoy worked up the nerve to glance over, and then he smiled. It was not what McCoy expected to see- not pity or concern or that tight look people got right before they offered advice they knew wasn’t welcome. It was just… warm. Leonard wasn’t ready to call it affection, but that was hard to argue when Pavel spoke next.

            “It is better that way.” His eyes brushed up and down, and up again, meeting Leonard’s eyes. So, so blue in the lichen light. “I have nightmares, sometimes, too. You are not alone.”

            _Alone. Not alone._

            It tickled at the back of his mind, and though he couldn’t quite figure out what ‘it’ was, he felt strangely better for hearing the words. He searched Pavel’s expression for another few heartbeats, but found only sincerity, only the kind of tenderness Leonard was sure he couldn’t bear.

            McCoy smiled and looked away, and Chekov turned back to the business of getting ready to leave.

            They managed to eventually get themselves together to head out for the day. True to Yewhara’s word, no one came to disturb them, not even to bring food. After a quick debate about whether to check the medical area for Omaru or to fetch breakfast – practically lunch, now, Chekov pointed out – they found themselves heading toward the only gathering hall they knew.

            As they approached, the sound of voices and shift of bodies became clear, higher and wilder than any Telk they had heard so far. McCoy traded a look with Chekov, more than a little excited for a chance to analyze the life stages of these people first hand, even if it would mean answering ten thousand inane and probably invasive questions in the process. Children, in his experience, had an insatiable sense of curiosity and no concept of the word _boundaries_.

            The gathering hall was _filled_ with bodies, dozens of small, tight groups of miniature Telk, and the sound a far greater clamor than the pounding of his heart in his temples had been. The adult Telk communicated among each other mainly with color and chemical combinations, but these young ones either had not learned or were just not yet capable of such fine control. The vast majority of them were a uniform grey, only tinted with color here or there, and every single one of them was talking at every single other one in voices at decibels not appropriate for indoor use.

            McCoy was briefly grateful that they had not been forced into this position yesterday, when his headache had been nearly intolerable.

            To their immediate right, McCoy noticed a small knot of adults, their colors shifting and sliding from one to the next as they exchanged touches and gestures. Around them were small piles of padding and blankets with little Telk curled up on them. These children, however, were blacker than the sky on a new moon night, and black was a color McCoy had never seen the Telk use.

            The group changed to a bright blue when they realized the humans had arrived, and they all began to make some kind of gesture that probably meant _come here_ and in no way looked like it. Chekov slipped one hand onto McCoy’s bare elbow, not looking at him, and McCoy did his best to act like that was normal for them as they approached the adults.

            As soon as they were in range, the Telk reached out to touch them, brushing tentacle fingers over their forearms and shoulders in greeting. “Welcome!” was repeated several times, accompanied by more gesturing.

            “They okay?” McCoy asked, motioning to the black, prone children.

            As one, the Telk turned to follow where he pointed, all of them changing several colors in rapid succession as they attempted to determine what McCoy was asking.

            “They sleep,” one of the Telk said, looking back to the humans.

            “Their color is because they are asleep?” McCoy asked carefully. That would make sense- a Telk at rest would not have any emotions to spur the color change, and true black was supposed to be the absence of color. It was at least part of why he hated space so much- life should have color.

            “No color,” the Telk said, still giving McCoy a look he figured was confusion.

            “Their no color is because they are asleep?” he tried again.

            “Agree!” All of the Telk began to murmur the word, like a small chant, before falling silent, some of them a mellow green, others a pleasant blue. The group fell into an awkward, expectant silence, but McCoy didn’t know where to begin asking questions.

            Somewhere behind them, among the teeming groups of children, someone shouted a word above all of the others, and the adults all turned bright purple at once. When McCoy and Chekov turned together to look, they found every last set of eyes upon them. They had been spotted. The adults began to corral them away from the sleeping young, directly into the oncoming crowd of excited children.

            It only occurred to McCoy as they were being swamped and practically dragged to the center of the mass, that none of the children might actually speak Standard.

            They were not so lucky. The Federation had only started interacting with the Telk within the last year, but as Telk matured at a year old, these ones must have been taught Standard alongside of the Telk language. They spoke it as fluently as any young humans McCoy had ever heard.

            “What’s that stuff on your head?”

            “Are those your _feet_?”

            “Where are your other fingers?

            “Can you do this?” one little one asked, tentacle fingers writhing in ways that assured McCoy there were no bones at all and made him feel slightly ill to watch.

            “No, I can’t,” he answered as Chekov laughed. “Stop that, kid.” He reached out and waved a hand at the little one’s still-waggling fingers and they pulled their hand back with a strange noise.

            Chekov, to McCoy’s surprise, took a seat on the floor among the children and tipped his chin down to show them all his soft curls of hair. “It’s hair,” he explained, unflinching when the nearest children reached tentatively to touch it. “Don’t pull,” he warned, “or you’ll hurt me.”

            The kids were surprisingly careful, petting and scrunching tentacles into Chekov’s hair just long enough to see what it felt like. “What’s it for?” one of them asked, sounding disdainful.

            “It used to be for keeping warm,” Chekov said patiently. “But… I think now it is just for appearance. Humans like how hair looks and feels. And these are not my feet, they are called _boots_.”

            Then he pulled one of them off, and all of the children began a high-pitched scream of alarm, several of them gaining a pale iridescence of gold over their natural grey. When they realized that _boot_ must mean an article of clothing, not a limb, they all quieted in tandem and pressed forward to see Chekov’s boots. He tugged off the other one to be passed around as well, grin splitting his face.

            “Humans wear them to protect their feet,” he said, wiggling his socked toes. The Telk did not wear foot protection as far as McCoy had seen, though he assumed the adults at least had knowledge of the practice, despite their thickly calloused footpads. None of them had seemed the least bit concerned with any of the humans wearing Fleet issue boots.

            The children made appreciative noises and contented trills as they touched the boots and poked at Chekov’s feet, until Chekov held out his hands for inspection as well. “And humans have only four fingers and an opposable thumb, instead of seven ah… fingers and a grasping pad. And our bones go into our fingers, so we can only do this!”

            He made claws out of both his hands, and the children made appropriately scandalized trills and squeals that brought a smile to McCoy’s face. Sometimes he missed how enthusiastic children were, how completely they threw themselves at everything that interested them. Pavel turned to look at him, brilliant smile lighting up his baby blues, and Leonard’s chest tightened.

            He was in _so much trouble._

            A clear, high note rang out above the titter of excited child voices, and almost at once the children fell silent in a way McCoy had never seen children do. They all turned to where the adults had been, and McCoy followed their line of sight to the food carts wheeling into the room.

            Gestures of thanks accompanied verbal thank yous as the gathering of children dissipated back to their small groups and the adults began to pass out bowls of food. A few of the children stuck close- just enough, McCoy realized, to form a group with the humans so that they would not be left alone. Chekov seemed to realize it as well, remaining seated on the floor rather than rise to go to the table where the adults had settled to eat. He didn’t even put his boots back on, clearly had no intention to either, so McCoy joined him unceremoniously on the floor instead.

            The food this time was bland, a semi-tasteless paste that the kids dug into with their hands rather than utensils, though fortunately both McCoy and Chekov had been provided utensils that resembled spoons closely enough to use. The texture was not unpleasant, actually reminded McCoy an awful lot of grits even though the tastes were nothing alike. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen any sort of flavor enhancers while they’d been here. No salt or pepper, no butter, no sauces, though he also did not recall any of the food needing it.

            When they were finished, Chekov began to collect the bowls from their group. McCoy passed his, careful to set the spoon in the top bowl so the stack would not unbalance. He watched the young Telk clean their fingers and hands like cats and realized there were no napkins of any kind, either. He was thankful his momma had taught him to be a neat eater as a kid, a practice he’d meticulously kept through to the present.

            As soon as Chekov left the group to head for the far side of the room with their dishes, the children around him began to vibrate with a soft hum. None of them changed colors, but McCoy recognized the tone immediately. The hum became a trill the farther Chekov got from them, until McCoy heaved himself to his feet and crossed over to where Chekov was passing off their dishes to a pair of blue Telk with wash carts.

            “Leonard?” Chekov asked, looking at him and then around them both as though looking for the danger. Sharp kid.

            “You walked away,” McCoy said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at their little group, all of whom were watching them intently. “Thought they were gonna start screamin’ if I didn’t come over.”

            “Ah,” Chekov said, his concern twisting up into amusement.

            He reached out one hand and slipped it into McCoy’s, and then proceeded to drag him back across the room to their group. The children all made fuzzy little noises upon their arrival and one of them picked up Chekov’s boot to hand to him.

            “I was not _leaving_ ,” Chekov told them gently as he accepted the present. He dropped the boot with a solid clunk, toeing the other one close, and then stepped into both of them before sinking smoothly back to the floor. This seemed to relax them. “I would not leave Leonard.”

            McCoy’s breath stuttered at the casual reassurance. Even though it was not intended for him, he felt it right down to his bones.

            _I will not leave_.

            He didn’t remember, not everything, but he remembered that much. He rubbed his hand unthinkingly against his thigh, remembering Pavel’s hands wrapped around his own. He remembered the words, remembered the suffusion of warmth and steadiness that had pushed out the despair of his bad dreams. His heart _ached_ with everything he wanted that to mean, everything he knew it couldn’t.

            “I noticed some of you played a game earlier,” Pavel said from the floor, making gestures with his hands. Leonard’s hands _burned_ to grab one and hold on. “Could you teach me?”

            McCoy took a few steps away, to the closest chair, partly because he didn’t want to deal with the aftereffects of sitting on the floor for a second time but mostly because he needed the distance. Needed space to breathe, space to tell himself to cut it out, to get himself under control before his feelings became a problem.

            Unfortunately, distance did absolutely nothing except give him a perfectly clear view of Pavel’s patient smile as the small Telk bunched around him taught him how to play their games. He matched the patterns they made as they touched hands, asking soft-voiced questions and listening intently to the answers the children gave, even when they sometimes made no sense. In return, he answered their questions with honesty and amusement, even when they had nothing to do with learning the game.

            It was absolutely not fair in the least, and McCoy intended to have a few heated words with karma when they finally got back to the ship.

            McCoy found himself so caught up in just watching Pavel be Pavel and wanting things he couldn’t really have that he didn’t notice the trill begin again until Chekov turned a worried look to him. He sat up a little, trying to determine what had upset them. He and Chekov were only a couple yards apart, the same as they had been for the last hour at least, and nothing about the room had changed as far as McCoy could tell. No one had entered or left, and yet when he paid attention, he could hear the hum spreading.

            “You are upset,” Chekov said to one of the children in their group, when McCoy just shrugged helplessly. “Why?”

            The little Telk hunched up and wouldn’t meet Chekov’s eyes. “You are ignoring your mate,” they complained. “Their chemicals are all _off_ and you are _ignoring them_.”

            McCoy paled, felt the hair on his arms raise at the insinuation. He had assumed that the children, with no ability to _produce_ chemicals yet, would also not be able to _sense_ them. Apparently that was wrong, and he’d just gotten caught mooning over Chekov like a schoolchild with a crush.

            Chekov looked just as bewildered, turned to see McCoy as he spoke. “I was not aware I was ignoring him,” he said softly, brow furrowing in question.

            “I’m fine,” McCoy assured him, grimacing when the trill intensified at the lie.

            One of Chekov’s brows rose. “Apparently that is not true,” he said.

            McCoy scowled. “Was just thinking about home,” he tried instead.

            Chekov’s expression softened at the same time the trill edged up again, close to tripping into the piercing scream. The adults across the room were attempting to talk to the children closest to them, while shooting the humans looks that probably meant nothing nice.

            “Now you’re _both_ wrong,” the littlest Telk informed them around the trill vibrating their small frame. They hunkered down into as small a ball as they could, looking miserable.

            McCoy looked up, catching Chekov’s eyes and seeing his own apprehension reflected back at him. This was _bad_. Very, very bad. They were not like the Telk; they could not just make their bodies produce the correct counter-chemicals to balance one another out. There was no way to quickly match each other the way the Telk could. They were going to have to give themselves away. They were going to have to make a run for it. They-

            He saw the moment of decision in Chekov’s eyes only a second before Chekov sprang to his feet and crossed the short distance between them without hesitation. Even as Pavel brushed soft fingers over the stubble on his jawline, McCoy knew what was coming, had more than enough time to lean back, to say no, to stop him while Pavel was still searching his eyes for permission.

            Instead, he lifted one hand, fingers sliding over Pavel’s elbow as he straightened. Pavel’s fingers curled under Leonard’s jaw, lifting his chin as he bent to meet him, and then his lips were on Leonard’s, soft and warm and gentle. Neither of them moved, breathless and tight, and then Pavel pressed forward just a smidge and Leonard’s heart leapt into his throat.

            But Pavel merely pulled back again, face flushed, tongue darting out to lick his lips as his dark eyes flickered over Leonard, searching for something. One thumb brushed over Leonard’s cheekbone, and it took everything he had not to lean into the caress like a cat seeking attention.

            McCoy let out his breath and tugged his face from Chekov’s grasp. Around them, the trill had ceased completely, indicating that their kiss had at least bought them some time, gotten them out of that particular bit of trouble.

            Out of the frying pan and right into the damn fire, he thought, lips still tingling.

            “Hell of a solution, kid,” he mumbled, voice more raw than intended.

            The pretty pink flush on Chekov’s cheeks darkened, and he gave a little one-shoulder shrug. “It seemed the fastest way.”

            McCoy wasn’t going to argue. It was clever, any way he looked at it, to use the human body’s natural responses to pleasant stimuli to produce the same chemicals in two separate bodies as quickly as possible. It was probably a better plan than fleeing for the shuttle through a raging death storm. Probably.

            “Humans are _weird_ ,” said one of the young Telk. McCoy snapped back to reality, reluctantly dragging his eyes off of Chekov to look around him at the children. All of them were staring, various levels of the same expression on their faces, what could only be interpreted as disgusted confusion. “Do all humans try to _eat_ each other to fix their chemicals?”

            Even if given another twenty years, McCoy was not sure he could duplicate the offended noise he made. At the same time Chekov covered his laugh with one hand over his mouth, eyes dancing with amusement. He lifted his brows, and McCoy knew that Chekov wasn’t going to be the one to explain a damn thing.

            “We weren’t _eating_ each other,” McCoy managed, his own face heating despite that there was no way the children would recognize the double entendre. “It’s called _kissing_ , and it’s something humans do to… match their chemicals.”

            “Why?” asked one, face crinkling.

            Now that the groups of young had calmed, the adults were approaching, ostensibly to discover the source of the near-meltdown. McCoy fumbled for an answer that wouldn’t get them into too much trouble if the adults overheard. Preferably something which wouldn’t require them to-

            “Because kissing stimulates matching chemical production in most humans,” Chekov supplied patiently. McCoy closed his eyes briefly as the adults reached them just in time to hear it.

            “Why?” the child asked again.

            “Because it feels good,” Chekov answered, looking to McCoy for help. However, McCoy knew this game. He wasn’t the one who’d started playing it, because he knew there was no limit to the number of whys a child could ask, only a limit to how long an adult had the sanity left to answer. Perhaps Telk were not that different than humans in some respects.

            “ _Why_?” came the inevitable question, right on cue.

            McCoy managed to keep a straight face when Chekov’s lips pressed into a thin line. For liking children, he must not have spent much time around them. “Because it… ah… well, you see-“

            “Why do you change colors when you’re happy?” McCoy asked. He figured he owed the guy a rescue or two.

            All eyes shifted to him, the adults slowly changing colors from orange to blue to green and back again as they waited for one of the children to respond. The children all looked tense and McCoy imagined they would be a burnt shade of orange if they had their colors. Finally one of them made a small noise and spoke up.

            “Be-Because our chromatophores respond to our neurotransmitters…?” They were clearly uncertain of the response. McCoy didn’t actually know why their colors changed, but that would have been his guess, seemed like the most likely answer, and none of the adults disputed or corrected it. Interesting- definitely something for the report.

            “Why?” he asked.

            McCoy didn’t need a translator to recognize the expression of betrayal on the faces of the children in the group. The adults all turned a soft shade of pink-purple as they caught on to his turn-around of the game. He actually witnessed the exact moment what he was doing dawned on Chekov, who again ducked his head and hid his smile.

            “Because they… do,” the smallest child said, tensing up. They didn’t have the same distressed yellow as the adults, but McCoy recognized the posture.

            “Well, kissing feels good because our neurotransmitters-“ and Lord, was it strange to hear that word come out of an infant’s mouth, reminded him far too much of Vulcans, reminded him far too starkly that they were not dealing with an unintelligent species as a whole, “-react to the nerves in our lips being stimulated.”

            The children all fell very, very still, unnaturally so, and beside them, the adults did the same, colors dulled to a shade of yellow-green-grey McCoy had not yet seen. McCoy’s stomach swooped fearfully to think he might have said the wrong thing, given them away somehow. A glance at Chekov told him he was wondering the same, but that what was done was done.

            Finally, one of the children straightened, one that McCoy didn’t think they’d heard from yet. “Ss… So it’s an opposite,” they said hesitantly, eyes squinted as they watched McCoy and Chekov both for reactions. “Humans kiss and then each produce the same chemicals individually? You do not exchange chemicals to equalize?”

            McCoy was not honestly sure what the correct answer, the one with the least severe repercussions, would be. He wasn’t much of a gambler, but he’d risked more on less than 50/50 odds. “Yeah.”

            The adults cleared to the mint-green McCoy had come to associate with understanding and acceptance, and the children all relaxed into a flurry of excited noises. Chekov gave a short, breathy chuckle of relief and practically collapsed onto the bench beside him. The noise cleared immediately, and McCoy’s alarms went off a second before one of the Telk spoke.

            “Show us how.” At the jostling of their group mates, the child added: “Please.”

            McCoy sat up straighter. “Aren’t you a little young to be-“ He was very certain they were too young for kissing, and even if they weren’t, he wasn’t about to corner Chekov into further kisses- even if Chekov _had_ started it. “You’re not even bonded yet.”

            The children all copied his motion, straightening, and one of them tipped their chin up defiantly. “We’re _eight_ months old,” they said haughtily. “We’ll be soft-bonds in two more months. We’re old enough to see human bond behavior.”

            “Agree,” said one of the adults, and the sentiment echoed among the small group. “We teach young many informations. You teach this now. Human informations.”

            McCoy sighed, looking sidelong at Chekov to see what he thought of this, but Chekov was just smiling. Chin tipped down, cheeks flushed with amusement rather than embarrassment, eyes bright when he glanced over to meet McCoy’s gaze. That felt _good_ in ways McCoy wasn’t about to admit to, to anyone.

            So he scrabbled for a way to ask what he needed to hear, in some way that the sharp Telk all around him would not be alerted but the bright young man beside him would understand what he was really asking. “Do you think it’s okay…? To show them.”

            Chekov tipped his head to one side, considering, eyes ticking back and forth as he searched McCoy’s face, and McCoy knew that he understood the question. This was too much to not have permission, to not have consent. They had not gotten any chance at all to discuss kissing and while a peck on the lips to prevent an escalating emergency was one thing, purposefully sharing in a kiss under calmer circumstances was another altogether.

            “Yes, Leonard,” Pavel said softly after a moment. “As long as you do not mind showing them.”

            The degree to which he did not mind defied measurement, though he couldn’t very well say that. Instead, he nodded, and then shifted to face Pavel a little more, heart thrumming under his skin in a way it hadn’t had a chance to earlier. Pavel didn’t flinch, barely even hesitated as he leaned into Leonard’s space, one warm hand on McCoy’s thigh to brace himself.

            Leonard closed the distance, letting their foreheads touch gently first before he gathered up every strand of nerve he’d ever had in his life and tipped his head to ghost his lips over Pavel’s. Just feeling the softness, just relishing the soft, short intake of breath on that first touch. Then Pavel pressed forward, and Leonard brought one hand up to slide along his jaw, to keep themselves grounded, keep things slow, to silently tell Pavel _I’m not going anywhere, we don’t have to rush this._

            It was _intoxicating_ the way no kind of alcohol had ever been, a heat that spread through his veins and left warmth red on his skin in its wake. Pavel’s fingers flexed against his leg, the tips of his free hand’s fingers finding Leonard’s bare elbow and sliding up over his arm like he might drag him closer. Leonard attempted to comply, bumping his elbow on the table behind him as he shifted to turn in his seat, and his quiet curse at the sudden pain shattered the moment.

            Pavel pulled back, flushed and breathing shallow as he quirked a grin at McCoy’s clumsiness. He rocked forward again before stopping short of picking up where they left off, teeth worrying at his bottom lip. A flash of uncertainty crossed his features when he glanced sidelong at the Telk, as if asking McCoy how much of a demonstration he thought necessary. McCoy wanted nothing more than to tell him _more_ , but he sat back and swallowed down the beginning of hope. He knew that Chekov didn’t have to be interested in him in particular to enjoy the act of kissing. He offered up a tentative smile to let Chekov know he was fine too.

            As if realizing the demonstration had concluded, the Telk around them picked up some kind of mid-tone, stuttering squeal-bark. It might have been very, very concerning if the adults were not all the color of one of Sulu’s purple orchids. That color, at least, McCoy knew meant they were pleased, so they must have done something right.

            All at once the children began to jostle one another, their squeal-barking falling apart into the very silly noise Omaru made, and despite his concerns Leonard found himself smiling for real. Chekov relaxed then, smile softening as he finally looked away from McCoy and over to the children. His eyes widened immediately and McCoy’s belly swooped in fear.

            He turned just in time to see two of the children, circled by their peers, lean in to touch their lips together.

            They broke apart into squeals not-unlike dragging metal over raw slate, and McCoy groaned. Of course they were going to try it now. Of-fucking-course they were. He had just taught an entire alien species how to kiss, and while the line-dancing was one matter, there was no way Jim didn’t find out about this one.

            He dropped his hands to his legs, and almost startled when one of them encountered one of Chekov’s, warm where he’d left it resting on McCoy’s thigh without his notice. Chekov didn’t seem to register at all when Leonard curled the tips of his fingers over the edge of Chekov’s palm, and McCoy wondered when exactly both of them had gotten so used to one another.

            He supposed it didn’t really matter; he was screwed no matter the answer.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES: Leonard's nightmare is being unable to save the crew from dying, specifically Jim, and it is resolved by hearing Chekov's voice in the dream telling him that he is not alone.
> 
> Also eeee I meant to hold onto this chapter for a few more days at least, but I've been dying to share it since I started it, and y'all've been so lovely in comments, so I guess you get it early!
> 
> And lastly, I'm going to be working on a different story for Nanowrimo during November but I will try to have another chapter of this one completed before Nov 1st. If I am doing well on my word count, I may take a break to scribble more on this one in November, but let's not make any promises I can't keep. I do promise I won't give up on this one, so if I disappear for a while, I will surely return after November! I hope that any of you also participating in Nano this year do wonderfully, good luck!! <3


	7. The Day of Rest II: Exploration

 

            “It’s not actually a piggy,” Leonard explained patiently for the fifteenth time in as many minutes, finally sitting on the bench beside Pavel again. “It’s still your toe.”

            Leonard had spent the better part of the last two hours trying to explain the concept of _pretend stories_ to the children, and had eventually given up and begun to just recite nursery rhymes. Some of them Pavel recognized, others – like the current story revolving around the daily lives of piglets and toes – he did not. Still, it was enjoyable to watch Leonard interact with the children, showing them the sort of gentleness he did not have for many adults, treating them with respect and patience.

            It was not exactly _rare_ behavior for Leonard to be so kind, but it was _reserved_ , generally for the crew members who had not yet done anything to offend his sensibilities. This softness was the behavior Pavel had seen the first time he had been injured aboard the Enterprise. The delicate way Leonard had run the tricorder node over him, eyes flickering back and forth as he assessed the injury… the careful way he had smoothed a palm over Pavel’s regenerated skin, smile crinkling his features.

            “You’re 4-0, kid, free to go,” he had said, half a smile on his lips. “And I don’t wanna see you back, y’hear?”

            At the time, Pavel had blushed and bolted at the chastisement, not realizing it was actually a well-wish. Over the years, however, Pavel had learned that a lot of the doctor’s language was like that- rough enough to keep people from suspecting he had soft spots. He did, though. Pavel had seen the captain press on them with both hands, had seen Mr. Spock tread carefully around them.

            He suspected he had found one today, himself, watching Leonard. He was _good_ with the children, clearly enjoyed their company and their antics, smiled more around them than Pavel had ever seen elsewhere. Somewhere in the galaxy, Leonard had left behind a daughter, and Pavel could not imagine how soft a spot that was for him. It made him ache for Leonard, for the things he could not give to him.

            “Then why did you say ‘this little piggy went to market’ if you are aware it is my toe?” said the little Telk seated on the floor before them, their legs out straight and their bare toes wriggling. “Did you forget?”

            Leonard’s sudden laughter caught them all off guard, and Pavel turned to look at him with wide eyes. He had heard Leonard laugh before, small huffs and that throaty, satisfied chuckle he gave when Mr. Spock got himself into trouble with the captain. At the last new year party, he had even seen Leonard laugh at a joke Uhura made, too much alcohol in his blood to stop it. Even that did not compare to this bright, unguarded outburst.

            Pavel swallowed, unable to look away from the smile splitting McCoy’s face. He could still feel Leonard’s fingers warm on the back of his hand, could still feel his solid thigh beneath his palm. He knew this sound would ring in his ears the rest of the night.

            “I forgot,” Leonard capitulated, mirth still thick in his tone.

            The little Telk opened their mouth to continue, but a loud, steady tone sounded from around the room, and all of the young stopped what they were doing to turn to where the adults had gathered. Alarmed, Pavel turned to see just as the adults began to speak in their soft-voweled tongue. Before long, the young began to gather and leave, each pair of adults taking a small group along with them as they exited.

            Beside him, Leonard got to his feet and Pavel hurried to follow suit. They crossed quickly to the nearest pair of adults before the Telk could disappear. “Somethin’ happen?” Leonard asked.

            The Telk changed a soft yellow-green and then orange. “Agree,” they said together. “Leaving time.”

            Pavel covered his chuckle with a shallow cough and managed to keep his smile under control at Leonard’s scowl. Much like Mr. Spock, the Telk were often a little too literal. “There is nothing bad?” he asked before Leonard voiced any of his frustration.

            “Agree,” they said again. “Only leaving time. You stay, or go with us, or go other places. Day of rest is your choice.” They both reached out, one of them laying a hand on Pavel’s shoulder, the other laying their hand on Leonard’s forearm. “Happy time. Goodbye.”

            With that, they gathered the young surrounding them, and began to herd the group in the direction of the corridor. Pavel watched them go, until the gathering hall was mostly empty, before turning to Leonard. The doctor just stared after the Telk, brows drawn and teeth worrying at the corner of one lip. Finally he shook his head and turned to look back at Pavel.

            “Guess we’re free men,” he said gruffly. “What’dya wanna do with the rest of the day?”

            Pavel gave him as mischievous a smile as he could. “We are Starfleet, yes?” he asked, pleased at the little brow quirk Leonard gave him at the obvious and rhetorical question. “I suggest that we do our job, and explore.”

            Leonard’s small puff of amusement warmed under Pavel’s skin. It did not really matter what they did the rest of the day, as long as he could spend it seeing Leonard so content. “Yeah, okay,” Leonard agreed. His body gave an almost involuntary twitch, like it meant to do something ahead of the thought of it, but he only settled back on his heels and stilled. “You lead.”

            Even though the room was empty, even though they could probably have gotten away with keeping separate, Pavel extended his hand to Leonard and after a moment of hesitation, Leonard took it. His hands were always warm and steady, the kind of soft that made the few calluses he had stand out. If he thought Leonard would let him, he might just hold them forever. Certainly he had gotten away with it overnight, curled around Leonard’s hand, murmuring reassurances until the other man had settled back into sleep.

            Even though Pavel had startled at getting caught, Leonard’s quiet _thank you_ still sat warm in his chest. However small it was, Pavel thought that perhaps there was a chance Leonard really had not minded. A chance that maybe he _did_ like holding Pavel’s hand now, especially considering how he threaded their fingers automatically.

            They found the hallways mostly void of activity, save a pair here or a small group there having a low discussion. Pleasant greetings and soft colors met them at every encounter, and Pavel found himself relaxing, enjoying their meandering journey through the honeycomb of passageways alone with Leonard. It was, though he would never say it aloud, a very sweet first Not-Date.

            It took them longer than Pavel would ever admit to notice that the lichen along the long, smooth hallways actually grew in patterns indicative of what lay behind them. Lost in just allowing himself to savor the warmth of Leonard’s hand in his, the patterns only registered when they found a particularly dark section of the corridor. Pavel stopped, letting Leonard run the leash of their joined hands until he tugged to a stop as well. When he turned back to look, Pavel pointed to the blank section of wall.

            “Do you think this is a door?” he inquired, glancing back the way they had come to see that other such darknesses intermittently patterned the hall.

            Leonard looked hard at it, gaze following Pavel’s backward down the corridor and then shifting so he could see ahead of them to more of the same. His brow furrowed in thought and then he reached out to touch the wall, splaying his fingers wide on the glass-like stone. Pavel followed suit, pressing against the slightly warm surface, knowing that it would do no good. If a door existed here, it would almost certainly not respond to them without Telk chemicals.

            To his surprise, it made a sound like falling sand and began to peel open from the center, the wall shifting and wavering in a way their own room’s door did not. A pair of equally surprised Telk stood on the other side, clearly waiting for the door to finish opening, and beyond them lay a cavern as different from the dining hall and med-wing as possible.

            Shelves and hanging things crammed every wall, long, stone work benches rose up from the floor, covered in materials and equipment that made them look far more permanent than any of the other structures Pavel had seen. The space between the benches did not look like it would fit two Telk walking abreast, seemed barely big enough to fit one walker at a time. The lichen covered the walls, shining white instead of blue and still not bright enough for the work being done here. Pavel noted that for the first time since their arrival, the Telk were using mechanical lighting.

            Pavel sketched a physical greeting to the Telk, who followed suit, turning an odd shade of brown. “Greetings,” Pavel said, keeping his voice pleasant. “We are exploring.”

            The Telk immediately turned to a soft blue. “Agree!” one of them said enthusiastically while the other moved out of the way. “We are exploring.”

            Pavel felt Leonard look at him, but he did not have any kind of explanation for that so he did not look back. Maybe the Telk all explored areas outside of their normal ones during days of rest. “Where are we?”

            Orange flashed across them both as they looked at one another, more than likely attempting to find the words to explain. Pavel edged a little closer to Leonard while they waited. Finally, the two Telk shifted to mint green and turned back. “Labs,” they said. “We assemble technology and commit science here.”

            Beside him, Leonard let out a puff of surprised laughter, eyes lighting up when Pavel looked. “Commit- Oh, Spock's getting that one when I get home,” he confided sidelong to Pavel, entirely amused. Pavel’s heart gave an extra hard thump in his chest at the easy confidence in him, at Leonard relaxing enough to joke.

            “Spock?” the second Telk asked curiously.

            “A friend,” Pavel said, not wanting to get into that particular conversation. He smiled, turning back to the Telk. “May we see your technology and science?”

            Both Telk turned a brilliant shade of pink-purple and beckoned them inside the cavern. “Agree, see technology.” They began herding them toward a pair of Telk sitting at one of the benches talking quietly in colors and gestures. “Ask Filgop, they have many technologies.”

            At the mention of their name, the Telk at the table looked up and brightened from a pale, pale grey to a warm orange that shattered with blue and purple. Pavel counted them among the Telk who shifted colors differently, and decided that he would ask where they were from, if he got a chance to do so in private. It had to be safer than inquiring with Omaru, all things considered.

            “Pavel!” one of them exclaimed, turning blue, and Pavel remembered where he had heard the name before- these two had brought them the device to make a table for their room.

            “Hello again!” Pavel greeted happily, glad to have found someone at least vaguely familiar. The Telk that had led them over were already disappearing out the door, apparently having passed the human torch. “We were told you have many technologies.”

            Fil turned an amused shade of pink, jagged streaks of purple twisting through it. “Oh?” they asked, and Gop’s pink color twinkled with purple bits, different than the way Fil changed colors. “Then we must.”

            Pavel laughed, ducking his head a little, not wanting to tease anyone that was not present. From his earlier conversation with them, Pavel knew that Filgop were just as good, if not better, at Standard than Omaru. “May we see? The device you brought to us earlier was fascinating.”

            “Yes!” Gop said, sitting up and reaching for the pile of parts spread out on the table in front of them. “We are working on something new!”

            Leonard gently pulled his hand from Pavel’s grasp and left long enough to grab two stools from nearby- another oddity, that they were not attached to the floor like everywhere else. He passed one to Pavel and sat on the other, folding his arms over the counter to look at the mess. Pavel smiled and took his own seat, just close enough that he could lean closer if he wanted, without falling off.

            “Tell us about it,” Pavel said excitedly, leaning forward as well, mind already leaping into putting together the disassembled pieces to try to figure out what it was.

            Filgop both turned blue-purple at his undisguised interest and began to explain.

 

* * *

     

            The door slid shut behind them, and Pavel moved across the room to set their late-night dinner package on the edge of the bed. Filgop had entertained them for the rest of the evening with a dozen different pieces of technology, everything from floating lights to a spiral node that burrowed harmlessly through the living stone to deliver messages to preset coordinates. Even their enthusiasm had its limits, however, and they had all traveled down to the kitchen to make themselves food. Gop had piled a lot of seemingly random foods into a stiff-bottomed bag and handed the package to Pavel before doing the same to Fil, who remained a brilliant shade of purple-blue the entire time.

            After they had said their goodbyes, Pavel and Leonard had continued to wander the hallways. Pavel let Leonard lead, hoping that he might know the way back to the room, but they had eventually had to stop and ask for directions, which were essentially useless in the veritable catacombs. The Telk they found took pity on them and led them back to their room with no indication of inconvenience. They thanked them profusely anyway.

            Pavel had not realized how tired he was until the bed was in his sight. It ticked that Leonard had not moved from the doorway, practically pressed back against the entrance, but it did not truly register until Pavel was out of his boots. He hesitated, glancing over, and Leonard’s gaze caught his. He looked very much like he was about to say something they would both regret.

            “You kissed me,” he said quietly, not quite a question, but not _not_ a question either. Pavel’s stomach dropped at the tone. He had been afraid of this, when he had done it- that Leonard would do what he thought he had to, instead of what he wanted.

            “You said you do not hate me,” he said softly, staying where he was just in case. “I thought that if that is true, and if it was not awful to do so, then kissing you might produce similar chemicals in both of us.” Leonard just stared at him with an expression Pavel had never seen, so he added weakly: “It did work.”

            Something scrunched Leonard’s eyebrows together, and then the fight seemed to go out of him. “It wasn’t _awful_.” Half a laugh startled out of Pavel at his tone, and Leonard gave him a sharp look that softened immediately. “It was actually… well, now that we explained kissin’ to them, told ‘em that’s how we equalize chemicals, they’re gonna want us to do it again, is all.”

            Pavel tamped down on the mix of excitement and fear that churned his stomach. He did not want to kiss Leonard because they had to, without enjoyment. He was fairly certain the Telk would catch them all the quicker if Leonard did not want to kiss him back. “Yes,” he agreed. “This is a problem?”

            “No,” Leonard said quickly, shifting away from the wall like he would cross the space between them. He stayed where he was, much to Pavel’s disappointment. “It’s just… are you okay with this? I know I asked, but…”

            “I am,” Pavel answered, offering up a hesitant smile and feeling a little better at the obvious relief on Leonard’s face. “I have no objections to kissing you, Leonard. It is easy. Though,” he added in a much lighter tone, before he gave himself away entirely, “I think we would not fool any humans.”

            Leonard made an indignant noise, involuntary if the scowl that followed it was anything to go by. “What’re you tryin’ to say?”

            Pavel swallowed, hoping the pale blue-green light in the room would hide his blush at this distance. He had been too forward. “Nothing,” he tried.

            “You’re saying we’re bad at this,” Leonard said, the same tone of voice he used when Mr. Spock made any kind of comment about medical information. Pavel thought he might be in trouble, though Leonard had yet to move away from the doorway.

            “I did not say that,” Pavel said, part of him hoping to placate Leonard, the rest not wanting to give him the wrong idea. There was nothing bad about kissing Leonard. “But I think it is obvious we have not had much practice with…” He made a soft motion between them, cheeks hot. This had seemed much easier in his head.

            “Practice…” Leonard echoed slowly, voice full of rough edges. “You think we need practice kissing?”

            “I’m sure you do not,” Pavel said, lips quirking as he seized the opportunity to wriggle out from the serious turn the conversation had taken. “Perhaps the Telk will incorporate bumping into tables as part of kissing.”

            “You-!” Leonard sputtered, mouth opening in disbelief and Pavel could not help but laugh a little as Leonard finally relaxed and moved away from the door. “Okay, smartass, if I’m so bad at kissing, maybe we just think of something else to do.”

            Pavel couldn’t wrestle the smile off his face, heart giving a little twist at the new nickname. “You want to explain more human affections to the Telk? I think it would be easier to use what we know works,” he argued gently as Leonard reached the foot of the bed. “If you still do not hate me, that is.”

            Leonard shot him a look that very clearly communicated how silly an idea that was before tossing a glance between him and their currently-abandoned food. “So you want to stick with kissing, that it?”

            Pavel swallowed, licked his lips, stomach tight with how quickly his joke had turned around on him again. Yes, he wanted that, wanted to kiss Leonard, wanted to kiss him where there was no one else watching. He wanted to kiss him where nothing could interrupt, where they did not have to keep one foot out the door to flee. He wanted to kiss him and worry more about whether it felt good than if it was convincing.

            “Yes,” he said, heart picking up and skin tingling at the risk of such an admission. His belly swooped pleasantly as Leonard took another step closer.

            “You know, we probably don’t need practice,” Leonard pointed out, eyes on his, clearly watching for any sign that Pavel was going to shy away as he closed the distance between them anyway. Pavel could not think of anywhere he would rather be. “It was a fluke, earlier.”

            “Obviously,” Pavel said quietly, barely a breath, not meaning for it to sound quite so patronizing. It earned him a bit of a scowl as Leonard took the final step.

            “You sure you’re okay with this?” Leonard asked hesitantly, fingers finding Pavel’s jaw with a gentleness that was no surprise at all. “You’ll stop me if…?”

            “Yes,” Pavel said again, more desperate than intended before he shifted forward and pressed his lips to Leonard’s for the third time that day.

            For just a moment, Leonard stiffened and held himself like he could not decide whether to push or pull, his free hand finding Pavel’s arm. Pavel brought one hand up, covering Leonard’s on his cheek, and settled his other on Leonard’s chest just to feel the beat of his heart. Leonard made a soft sound of surrender and then he was kissing Pavel back, head tipping to better slot their mouths together, lips moving slow and gentle over Pavel’s.

            Pavel did his level best to contain the whine that threatened to spill from him when Leonard took a small step forward, closer. His calf hit the side of the bed and he found his strength again, pushing back into Leonard’s advancement. The low, breathy noise Leonard made could not possibly have been a growl, but Pavel swallowed it anyway, lips parting to dart a quick lick at Leonard’s lips.

            He was unsurprised to find Leonard tasted just as good as Pavel had always guessed he would, warm and mellow and _Leonard_. He licked into Leonard’s mouth as hands smoothed around the curve of his shoulders in tandem, chasing the tingles of arousal down his spine and-

            And he pulled back, trying to catch his breath without moving away, letting his forehead rest against Leonard’s. They were both breathing a little too fast, and Pavel had to force himself to relax his fingers from where they had curled into the loose fabric of Leonard’s Telk shirt. Leonard had been correct- he did not need practice.

            Before he could think too much about it, he tipped forward and placed a kiss quickly on Leonard’s lips. It was only the briefest of pecks, and a thrill slid under his skin when Leonard leaned into it instantly, followed after when he pulled away. He didn’t want to stop. _Had_ to stop. Kissed breathlessly back when Leonard took another kiss, and another, soft and sweet and quick. Had to.

            _Hard_ to, when Leonard pulled back enough to look at him and all Pavel could see was the same unabashed wonder in Leonard’s eyes as he had had when he first saw the lichen changing colors in the hall. Pavel reached both hands for Leonard’s jaw to hold him steady, thumbs roaming his cheekbones, and stole one more gentle kiss before pulling away again.

            “I told you,” he said, voice not working the way it should, words catching on the desire wrapped around his throat. He was in trouble, needed to find a way to take a step back that did not involve falling onto the bed Leonard had backed him up to. “It will not be so difficult to pretend.”

            Leonard took a slow breath and stepped back from him, hands ghosting over the edge of Pavel’s hips as he extracted himself. Pavel let him go, tracked the motion of his hand through his hair and the too-forced smile twitching at his lips. Pavel licked his own lips, tasting the doctor’s kisses still, and very nearly stepped forward to close up the distance again. Instead, he dropped down onto the edge of the bed and let out a shaky breath.

            For another few seconds, Leonard stayed where he stood, jaw working like he had something to say, and then he blew out a breath and quirked a real smile. “You’re something else, kid.”

            Pavel smiled at the warmth in Leonard’s tone, the same as when he had told Pavel he was fine that first time in sickbay. This time, however, Pavel did not flee- he stretched out on his side of their shared bed and did his best not to think about the lie he had told.

            It was going to be _very_ difficult to pretend he was not in love with Leonard.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to share my current helper with you:  
>   
> Enjoy your weekend!


	8. The Ex

 

 

 

            McCoy woke to warmth, pleasant and heavy against him. Something soft and wispy tickled at his chin, and he gave a soft wuff to clear it before realizing it was hair. Brain still muzzy with sleep, he curled a little more tightly to the sleeping body tucked so perfectly into the curve of his own. It had been a long damn time since anyone had stayed in his quarters overnight, since anyone dared curl closer instead of away from him.

            A soft sigh of breath ghosted over his exposed collarbone, and McCoy shivered into wakefulness with a start as he remembered that he was not in his quarters aboard the Enterprise, and the boy practically wrapped around him was no random crewmate. At some point, Pavel had found his way across the bed, straight into McCoy’s arms.

            Heartbeats ticked in his fingertips where they laid against Pavel’s skin as he considered waking him, considered putting a reasonable amount of space between them again. He didn’t. He didn’t want to. He wanted this- wanted it, wanted it, _wanted it_. So he didn’t move except to breathe in the soft scent of the other man, body alight with the intimate proximity and surely pumping out every chemical love could ever hope to produce.

            Maybe it would work in their favor, he told himself, knowing it was only an excuse.

            It was the eventual trembling in his body – exhaustion from the drop in norepinephrine, his mind supplied clinically – that caused him to break the moment. He shifted, nuzzling gently at Pavel’s hair before he released his tentative grasp, just enough to know he wouldn’t be totally asleep when Leonard spoke.

            “Pavel…” he said softly, gently.

            Pavel made a grouchy, tired noise of protest and his grip tightened on Leonard’s middle as he burrowed in closer still. Leonard stopped breathing when Pavel shifted just-so, one leg slithering over his calf to bring Pavel’s hips closer to his own. He clamped his jaw against the noise clawing up his throat at the sensation of Pavel’s involuntary hardness against him.

            “Pavel,” he said again when he had enough control to speak it instead of moan it. He still wasn’t sure he succeeded.

            Body stiffening, Pavel opened his eyes and then jolted into wakefulness. He drew in a fast, sharp breath and then rolled onto his back, retracting his leg with a mumbled apology. Before McCoy could say anything, Pavel grabbed at the thin sheet and pulled it up over himself with another soft apology, voice still thick with sleep.

            McCoy let him lie there in silence for a moment, let him collect his thoughts or maybe just calm down without interruption. When it became clear that Pavel was not about to get out of bed first, McCoy let out a soft puff of air and sat up. “Hey,” he said softly, just enough to get Pavel’s attention.

            “I’m sorry,” Chekov breathed out, rolling onto his side away from McCoy.

            It took every ounce of McCoy’s self control not to reach out and touch him, to reassure him in the very physical way he would have liked to do. “It’s okay,” he said, voice far more even than he felt. “It happens. Just a function of biology.”

            “That makes it no less embarrassing,” Chekov said too calmly, though he took a deep breath and got himself into a sitting position as well, facing away from McCoy.

            “Not to a doctor,” McCoy said, staying where he was.

            Chekov seemed to relax at the gentle reminder, though he didn’t move for several more minutes. When he did, it was to snatch up his discarded shirt and tug it on over his head like armor, a solid reminder to McCoy that this whole… _everything_ was not what Chekov wanted. Maybe he would not object, maybe he didn’t mind, but it was also not what he wanted. _McCoy_ was not what he wanted.

            “Thank you,” Chekov said quietly, finally looking over at him, face still flushed.

            McCoy did not bother asking what for, just smiled and got to his feet to retrieve his own shirt. “We’re back with Omaru today,” he offered, as neutral a topic as he could dredge up. “Lord knows what’s left to do though.” They had apparently seen every single Telk in the sector the first day.

            He did his level best to keep his attention on himself while they sorted themselves out and got ready to go. It was very clear Chekov had no intention of bathing and, all things considered, McCoy wasn’t about to strip down within a hundred yards of him if he was still feeling uncomfortable about their wake up. So they each dressed and grabbed their PADDs and headed for the door in silence.

            That might have been the end of it, _should_ have been the end of it, except that almost as soon as they walked into the med wing in search of Omaru, all of the gathered Telk turned the exact same shade of neon magenta. McCoy hadn’t known magenta even _came_ in neon. A low, vibrating hum began, and McCoy didn’t quite manage to contain his groan. They hadn’t done a damn thing yet.

            One of the Telk holding a scanner set it down and McCoy found himself almost positive that it was Aru even before they spoke. “You’re early,” and McCoy was right, it was Aru. “There was no rush to arrive. You had time to…” They turned, if possible, a brighter shade of pink, almost certainly off the ultraviolet charts. “You could have resolved your states of arousal before attending.”

            “Oh, Lord,” McCoy said, his own face heating the same as Chekov’s. This was really the last thing either one of them needed. “We’re fine.”

            “You are not fine,” Aru said, turning a shade of yellow.

            “He means we are functional,” Chekov said, still blushing. “When humans say they are fine, they mean they are functional.”

            Aru’s colors shifted and swirled a few times, yellow to pink to burnt orange to an unsteady shade of green that, if anything, made them look even more unhappy. “Is something wrong? Do you not want to remain in your room together?”

            “It’s not that,” McCoy said, even though it was pretty much exactly that. He was fairly certain Chekov didn’t want to be in _this_ room with him, either, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. “Look, Aru, humans… well, we don’t always _resolve_ our uh… our physical states. Sometimes we just…” He blew out a breath, trying to come up with a way to explain that instant gratification wasn’t everything, without getting stuck promising to do something about it later. “Sometimes humans just become, or enjoy, being aroused without wanting anything else.”

            Chekov groaned in utter embarrassment and plopped himself down in the nearest chair. “Perhaps we can find something more productive to discuss?” he suggested. He sounded so strained that McCoy wished they could be back in the room alone, if only for the chance to reassure him it really was fine.

            Instead, he took a seat on the opposite side of the table, ensuring there was a physical barrier between them that wouldn’t be too upsetting to the medical staff around them. Aru traded a glance with Oma, but neither of them pressed the issue. Oma simply brought over one of their portable data screens, and took a seat beside McCoy.

            “Your Federation requested samples of many Telk medicines,” they said softly, not looking at Pavel at all. “You intended a short visit, hours only, so you could learn nothing of them. Now you must stay, so we have time. If you want, I can perform teaching to you.”

            McCoy relaxed at the offer, even finding himself a little excited. It was true that the Federation did not know much about the medicines it had requested for research, but the initial report had detailed such things as retroactive, adaptive vaccines that changed to teach an immune system defenses against common bugs in real time. He was the most interested in the living oil that supposedly consumed gamma radiation, still one of the more arguably dangerous elements of space. That was to say nothing of the bone-repairing injection, or the anesthetic which disconnected everything like a general with no loss of consciousness or lucidity, or any of the other dozens of fascinating treatments the Telk seemed to find commonplace.

            “I would enjoy that,” he said earnestly, leaning to look at the data pad in Oma’s tentacle fingers. Across from him, Pavel put his head down on the table.

 

* * *

 

            Three hours into their day, three hours into listening to Oma’s soothing voice explain too many things he wouldn’t remember without further study, McCoy set down the data pad and scrubbed at his eyes. One of Chekov’s calves rested against one of his under the table, the concession they’d made by unspoken agreement upon first noticing the quiet hum of malcontent around the room. The other bounced almost continuously, and McCoy was at the end of his rope for tolerating it with any amount of grace.

            “Hey,” he said softly, just enough to catch Chekov’s attention.

            Those bright, blue eyes turned up from the data pad and snagged on his, curious. He froze, apparently recognizing that he was fidgeting, and tucked his free leg back under his chair. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “It is just, we have been sitting for a long time.”

            McCoy tipped his head a little, brow raising. “Not longer than a bridge shift,” he said.

            “Bridge shifts have breaks,” Chekov replied, though amusement sparkled in his eyes. “Perhaps you are unfamiliar with-“

            “I know what a break is, smartass,” McCoy told him, fighting the smile. “I take breaks. Twice.”

            “Ever?” Pavel said with a grin.

            McCoy rolled his eyes and resisted swatting at the kid like he might’ve done Jim. Straightening, he took a quick skim of the room and surmised that everyone was busy, and no one seemed ready to trill at them for strange offenses. “If you need to take a break, do some stretches or whatever, there’s a restroom down the hall a few paces.”

            There was exactly zero chance that McCoy was about to offer to go with him, but as the bathroom was literally one door away from the entrance, he didn’t figure it would be that worrisome. If anyone even noticed – and considering how wrapped up everyone seemed to be in their work now, he thought they might not – he could just explain that Chekov would be back in a few minutes. If nothing else, it would give him an opportunity to explain that humans could spend a few minutes apart without dying, which might let them get some distance now and again.

            “You do not need to go?” Chekov said, already getting out of his chair. “They will be upset if you stay here.”

            McCoy nodded. “Yeah, they will, but I’ll handle it. We can’t live a month in each others’ pockets one hundred percent of the time. Us gettin’ a few minutes alone here and there won’t kill them. Just… don’t take too long.”

            Chekov smiled and reached over to brush his hand over McCoy’s, light and familiar in a way such a touch hadn’t been only days ago, and then he slipped along one wall toward the exit. McCoy watched him go, skin tingling and a too-soft smile on his traitorous lips. He could get used to such warm affection, every bit as casual but far less abrasive than he was used to receiving from friends. He knew he shouldn’t be ignoring the alarm bells that kind of thought sounded, but Leonard was nothing if not stubborn and it couldn’t hurt to have another friend. At least, it couldn’t hurt more than he was capable of handling, he reasoned.

            Across the room, the door made a sound like sliding sand as it opened and closed with a touch of the chemical device, hardly noticeable even in the quiet atmosphere. It was barely fifteen seconds before the first trill of alarm, and McCoy realized they were already caught.

            “It’s okay,” he said loudly, drawing attention away from the closed door where Chekov had disappeared. “He’ll be back in a few minutes.”

            “But he is _alone_ ,” one of the staff said, taught and yellow. “ _You_ are alone!”

            McCoy hesitated, mouth open to explain, and then cleared his throat, unsure. “That’s… okay, for humans,” he said slowly, glancing over to where he was pretty sure Omaru’s station was. Both the Telk there were frozen very still, a strange shade of yellow-orange, and staring right at him in a way that suggested they were sure he would attack someone. “We’re okay to be separated for a little while.”

            “You’ll _die_ ,” said the Telk beside the first speaker. Their yellow flashed orange and then back to yellow.

            “No,” McCoy said quickly, grasping for a good reason why that wasn’t true that would not expose their lie. “I explained to your young yesterday that humans work… the opposite of Telk. You produce chemicals and then touch to equalize them, right?”

            A murmur of agreement passed through the medical staff, but when McCoy looked over, Omaru were just as stiff and yellow as before.

            “Well, humans… don’t,” he said carefully. “We touch, among other things, and then we each produce the same chemicals. To equalize,” he added, although that was not entirely true. “So, if we have touched, we can separate and still produce the same chemicals for a while. Do you understand?”

            The quiet thrum of unease continued as colors wavered around the room, and then Oma seemed to shake off their anxious stupor and spoke up. “I believe Amanda told us that human mates can be apart even by great distances, if they can communicate.”

            “Yes!” McCoy said quickly, pointing at Oma and feeling a huge wash of relief and gratitude for the save. “Certain kinds of verbal or visual communication can stimulate chemical production in humans.” The hum began to die off, and Oma and Aru, though both still taut, had begun to slowly change to a soft yellow-blue mix.

            One of the Telk closest to McCoy’s station gave a jittery little noise and turned an alarming shade of yellow-orange. “But you cannot communicate with Pavel now!”

            McCoy held up his hands in an attempt to placate the Telk before remembering that the gesture was basically meaningless. The trill was starting again, and he wasn’t sure how to stop it. “But he will be back soon,” McCoy assured them. “And even if he wasn’t, humans are very resilient, we can be apart by great distances and for a long time without dying.”

            “How long?” demanded the same Telk, shrill through the warbling noise they continued to make. “An hour?”

            “Uh,” McCoy said, shooting a glance to Oma and Aru, though both were again strung taut as a piano wire and sunflower yellow. “Longer?” he said tentatively, realizing he had no idea how long Telk could be apart before it started to adversely affect them. Considering how often they touched and how close they stayed to one another, he worried maybe it was only minutes, and anything beyond that might be incomprehensible.

            “A day?” another Telk squeaked, sounding terrified. The trill escalated again.

            “Well, yeah, a day,” he said, and the solid number seemed to calm them somewhat, the trill dropping back to a nervous thrum that vibrated the air. He relaxed a little, and ventured a further reassurance in the hopes of stopping their worries completely. “But humans can survive a lot longer than that, too. Months, or even years.”

            Though the hum rose, it did not trip over into a trill again. “Years…?” one of the smaller Telk asked, their entire form practically vibrating, and McCoy wondered if maybe they were only remaining quiet by force of will.

            He nodded. “Humans are… resilient,” he said quietly, remembering how on the first day, when Chekov had lowered his voice the Telk had gotten quieter to hear him. It appeared to be working. “It does not even necessarily kill us if we lose a mate entirely.”

            Oma made a sharp noise and covered their mouth as the trill returned in full force, high and whiny. The Telk who had first spoken up raised their voice over the noise. “You do not speak the truth!” they said firmly, red flashing briefly over their skin before disappearing. Oma and Aru were already coming across the room to him, and McCoy realized his mistake.

            They thought he had just lied.

            “No, I _do_ speak the truth,” he said quickly, backing away and holding up both of his hands. He did not think Omaru would outright attack him without listening, but considering the two of them had killed _children_ , he wasn’t about to bet his life on it. “A few years ago, I lost my first mate when she left me for- oh, for God’s sake-“

            As soon as the words had left his lips, the thrum ratcheted into screaming and flailing, with two of the pairs actually compelled to mill around in a panic. He wished he were somewhere in life that he didn’t consider that progress in the correct direction, but he was pretty sure it was. At least, he was pretty sure they no longer thought he’d lied.

            Strangely, Omaru were silent, their yellows wavering to orange and back again as they trailed to a stop a couple yards away to regard him. When their attention shifted a moment later, McCoy followed their line of sight to where Chekov stood in the now-open doorway, looking confused. McCoy hadn’t heard the door open over the noise.

            “What did you do?” Chekov shouted, heading quickly to McCoy’s side.

            McCoy growled, knowing it wouldn’t be heard, and then waved a hand broadly at the room, far more willing to admit to anger than to the fear still sitting cold in his belly at what had almost happened. “I broke the damn-“

            As soon as Pavel reached him, he interrupted whatever McCoy had been about to say, curling his fingers under McCoy’s jaw and dragging him into a kiss. For a split second, Leonard wasn’t sure if sound hollowed out because he was surprised or because the Telk were. Either way, the only thing he heard was his own soft sound of appreciation and the quiet huff of breath Pavel gave when he pulled back again.

            They stood like that for several short breaths, Pavel’s hands burning his jawline, noses and lips almost touching, until Pavel gave himself a small shake and withdrew. His fingers followed the line of Leonard’s neck, over his collarbones, smoothing down his arms to take one of his hands as Leonard tried to remember how to breathe normally.

            Pavel had kissed him. Pavel had kissed him _again_ , and even though Leonard knew why, even though he _knew_ it was a show for the Telk, he began to wonder if there wasn’t at least some part of Pavel that enjoyed this. Just maybe this situation was not all bad in Pavel’s eyes. His seeming reluctance to release Leonard, the way his touch lingered… Leonard swallowed hard and reined in that bit of misguided hope as he turned with Pavel to face the Telk once more.

            Every last one of them had gone silent and pink, watching with wide eyes. Oma and Aru had arrived at their side at some point, and Oma reached out to lay a hand on Leonard’s free arm, eyes trained on Pavel like they thought he might object. When he only smiled at them, Oma shifted their attention up to McCoy.

            “You lost your mate?” Oma said gravely, barely a breath, not loud enough to be understood by anyone else, even in the eerie silence. McCoy’s stomach dropped at the reminder of their earlier conversation, any lingering trace of good feeling evaporating. “We did not know.”

            McCoy fidgeted uncomfortably, pulling away from their light touch to rub at the back of his neck. “Yeah, well,” he said gruffly, wishing he could be somewhere else, _anywhere_ else. “It’s not exactly something I like to advertise.”

            “You told them you… lost a mate?” Chekov asked quietly. McCoy could hear the incredulity behind the words, even if he was certain the Telk wouldn’t pick up on it. He had no explanation- it had made sense at the time. “Why?”

            “It’s the truth,” McCoy said, trying not to let it sound too cranky. The last thing they needed was for him to get upset over Pamela, especially as another kiss from Pavel at that point was apt to do more harm than good. “I don’t think it’s any secret back home that I’ve got an ex.”

            “An x?” Aru asked, confused.

            McCoy sighed, and glanced around the room. All of the Telk were listening in now, shuffling closer. There was no way he would escape explaining it now. “When one human in a pair leaves the other, not by death, but just leaves the bond, we call the mate an ex. It doesn’t kill us to go through this, but it… it does damage.”

            “You are damaged?” Aru asked gently. They took another step closer, and McCoy straightened, not sure what the Telk intended to do about it. He wasn’t sure how to explain that this damage could not be healed by a doctor- he should know that better than anyone.

            Pavel squeezed his hand. “Leonard’s original mate left him, and that is what makes him wary of our bond now,” he explained patiently, and Leonard didn’t exactly flinch, but that hit a lot closer to home than he was ever going to admit aloud. “It is why we seem to act strangely to you, sometimes.”

            And there it was again, the kid covering their asses by turning every turn of events into an opportunity, saving the day. The screaming panic of a few minutes ago relaxed into a curious murmur of discussion, and the Telk began to return to their business, except for Omaru. Oma stood beside McCoy, still looking knotted up about what they had learned, and then reached out to touch his arm again. This time, McCoy remained still, looking steadily back as Oma searched his face for something they could not possibly read.

            “Your mate…” Oma said softly. “You… chose them? And they _left_ your bond voluntarily?”

            McCoy swallowed and couldn’t force himself to break eye contact. “Yeah,” he admitted, not proud of the way his voice still wavered, after so many years. He should have been used to this feeling a long time ago.

            Oma shifted to look at Aru, who just stared back, both their colors swirling uncertainly until Oma looked again at McCoy. “We cannot imagine surviving that.” They dropped their gaze finally, looked for all the world like they were gathering themselves together again. “It is good you have a new mate,” they said finally, glancing back up, and then over to Chekov. “We will help you.”

            McCoy stifled a groan in order to force a smile. “Thank you,” he said, and hoped that they would both survive whatever help from the Telk would entail.

 

* * *

 

            In retrospect, he should have expected the way their table flooded with Telk when they sat down alone to dinner that evening. Chekov greeted the first two to sit and when one of them shattered from purple to blue, McCoy recognized them as Fil and Gop from the research lab. It pleased him to know he was catching on, able to tell one color changing pattern from another, one Telk from another, without chemicals. By the time the sixth pair crammed in around the table, raising chairs too close together to be casual, McCoy leaned a little closer to Chekov and gave him a nudge.

            Chekov looked over and then actually seemed to pay attention to his surroundings instead of his food, and his eyes widened.

            Gop put their arms up on the table, resting their jaw on their hands and switching some kind of open-mouthed look between Chekov and McCoy. “We heard some _talk_ today,” they said, every bit as serious as a middle school gossip.

            “About you,” Fil clarified, as if that was not painfully obvious. McCoy made a long-suffering sound and took another bite of his food. “About humans, really.”

            Chekov tipped his head, but did not offer any information, much to the apparent frustration of the Telk across the table.

            “Well?” Gop prompted. “Can humans be separated from their mates?”

            McCoy winced. He really did not want to go into this again. Once a day was already too many times. Fortunately for him, Chekov swooped in before he could say a word.

            “They can,” he declared. The Telk around them all flashed pink and yellow and orange and green and sent up a rapid trill that didn’t sound like a panic. It cut off as abruptly as it began at a motion from Gop, and McCoy wondered if the person or the motion had stopped them.

            “And it’s normal for humans?” Gop asked. “How do you survive?” They looked about ready to climb over the table to start taking vitals, maybe some blood.

            Chekov didn’t appear particularly concerned, and McCoy found himself thankful that they’d stolen a couple minutes to catch up after leaving the medical wing. Even though he hadn’t had time to bring up their kiss, he had at least been able to tell Chekov what he’d told the Telk about producing the same chemicals for a while after parting. Chekov had agreed that it was in their shared best interest to continue to use this excuse. They had just barely managed to work out what they would say when they inevitably were asked about it again, and then two of the medical staff had caught them loitering and escorted them politely to the dining hall.

            “It does not harm us the same way it harms you,” Chekov said evenly, pushing his food around his plate and glancing to McCoy for confirmation. McCoy nodded. “Since we produce our own equalizing chemicals after… contact, we can be apart for long periods of time. Most humans do not work in the same place as their mates- we even have rules against it in some places.”

            McCoy winced- they hadn’t discussed that, and it was a sharp reminder of what awaited them back on the ship. He’d never taken the time to look up fraternization regulations. No one had ever looked in his direction in a way that would have made it necessary, and he preferred the safety of thinking it was against the rules for anyone he might have favored. Better than knowing it wasn’t and trying something he’d regret.

            “You do not work with the doctor?” Fil asked, alarm yellow shattering across their purple.

            “I do not,” Chekov confirmed. “I work in the command area of our ship. Leonard works in the medical area of our ship, several decks below. Except, he does spend a lot of time on the bridge.”

            McCoy opened his mouth to protest when he caught the twinkle of laughter in Chekov’s eyes, and scowled instead. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked, figuring that was as neutral a question as he could get away with. Most of the time he visited the bridge to see Jim, although it certainly didn’t hurt that Chekov was usually there as well, and always with a smile for him.

            “Never,” Chekov told him, the word gone soft in the middle, his smile so genuine it tugged at something inside of McCoy. He could almost believe the kid meant it.

            Gop looked between the two of them, the same open-mouthed expression on their face. They made a sudden, silly noise that startled both humans, and then sat up straighter. “Humans are so brave!” they declared.

            “So _reckless_ ,” Fil amended, putting one hand on Gop’s head to still them. “Taking such chances, being away from your mates like that. What if something were to happen? You would not know.”

            McCoy shifted uncomfortably. That was the crux of it, really. He had come to space because he didn’t have a choice, but he stayed there because he couldn’t stand the thought of being away, of not knowing. It was the reason he spent so much time on the bridge and turned up in the transporter room when away missions returned, and generally got himself into more trouble than remotely necessary. If something happened to the people he’d come to care so much about, he wanted to know.

            “No, I suppose we would not,” Chekov agreed, looking sidelong at McCoy. “It happens. Sometimes when we are not together, our mates are hurt, or…” He gave a little shake of his head, eyes clearing as he looked up to Fil. “But, we are human. Part of being human is not always having control.”

            “Horrifying,” Gop breathed, eyes alight with fascination. The Telk around them did not appear nearly as fascinated, many of them a sickly orange color, but they continued eating their dinners without comment. “Humans are utterly horrifying. Amazing.”

            “Gop,” Fil said, and Gop turned a brilliant chartreuse before bubbling into blue.

            “Well they are!” they said, leaning forward again. “Would you like to come back to our lab tomorrow? We could-”

            “ _Gop_ ,” Fil said firmly. “Omaru are watching over the humans while they are here.”

            “Yes, but-“ Gop began, and then tipped their head and made a motion remarkably reminiscent of rolling their eyes. “I know. It is just… yes, I know.”

            Chekov glanced over at McCoy in question, but McCoy had no answers beyond the obvious. They were an anomaly, but apparently not one confirmed to be dangerous or bad, for the moment. He was not keen on letting Gop run any kind of experiments on him, or on Chekov. Neither, apparently, was Fil, and McCoy filed that away under something to think about later. This was the first time he had seen Telk disagree within a pair.

            “Maybe we can visit,” Chekov offered gently. “For a little while.”

            Gop brightened considerably into an almost neon blue. “Yes!” they said excitedly. “For a little while.”

            Fil sighed, but their color didn’t waver from their steady, pleasant blue, and McCoy guessed that they were just as happy to have a shot at talking privately with the strange, wild humans. McCoy cleared his throat, drawing both their attentions.

            “I think it’s time we head back to our room,” he said carefully.

            “Yes,” Pavel agreed instantly, a smidgeon too fast to be casual. Apparently he wanted out of there just as much as McCoy did.

            “Do you know the way?” Fil asked politely, head tipping and colors shattering around to green and grey and purple.

            Chekov nodded in response and stretched his arms across the table, palms up. Gop immediately laid one of their hands over one of Chekov’s, and Fil more slowly did the same to his other. The contact lasted only a second, reminiscent of the chemical exchange touches made by the Telk all the time, and then Chekov clambered to his feet and flashed McCoy a smile.

            They cleared their plates, depositing them near the doorway on one of the ever-present carts, and headed up to their room. Several times they passed Telk who stuck to the far side of the corridor, an orange hue to their skin that looked awful in the blue lichen light. McCoy didn’t particularly like the look of that, but as no one actually stopped or said anything to them, he kept his mouth shut.

            Chekov opened the door for them with a touch of the chemical device he carried everywhere now, and closed it behind them as soon as McCoy was through. McCoy felt something within him loosen up away from the scrutiny of the Telk, and it wasn’t until he relaxed that he realized just how tense he’d been. By the way Chekov slumped to sit on the edge of the bed, McCoy thought maybe he wasn’t alone in that feeling.

            After only an exchange of glances and head tips, Chekov took the first bath while McCoy logged what he had learned at the medical facility for the day. There was a lot, and most of it was disappointing at first glance. Many of the medicines and treatments the Telk used were amazing, but there was no immediate way to use them on humans. It was far more likely that similar treatments would need months or even years of adaptation and development to be compatible.

            On the bright side, with how aggressively adaptive Telk medicine and technology were, McCoy found himself optimistic that things _could_ be made compatible. A few years in the grand scheme of things was a small price to pay, a short wait for something like evolving vaccines. If it could be taught to evolve in several directions, if it could evolve throughout a person’s life, maybe they could someday get to the point of one vaccination as a baby or very young child and just be done with it.

            The idea of completely eliminating lifelong routine vaccination visits from humanity’s schedule kept him lost in thought as he bathed and toweled himself mostly dry. So preoccupied, in fact, that he jumped when Chekov quietly said his name from behind him.

            He looked over his shoulder, heart still pattering too fast from his return to the present, to find Pavel already lying stretched out on his own side of the bed. “Sorry,” he said quickly, thinking he had missed whatever Pavel had said. “Wasn’t ignoring you, just thinking about today.”

            “Me too,” Pavel said quietly.

            McCoy’s brow furrowed at the concern in Pavel’s tone. He turned around fully, pulling his feet onto the bed to sit against the wall that served as their headboard. “What’s eatin’ you, kid?”

            “Nothing,” Pavel said, and it was so obviously a lie that McCoy just waited for him to continue. Eventually he flicked an uncertain glance up to McCoy and then down again, lips a tight line before he spoke. “Today, you told the Telk about your wife.”

            “Ex-wife,” Leonard said automatically, brows ticking up when Pavel looked at him. “It’s been a long time since all of that.” Ridiculously, it felt like a reassurance, like trying to prove the statement’s veracity when he added: “She’s definitely an ex-wife.”

            “You loved her,” Pavel said quietly, not looking at him. “You love her still, even though she left you, even though she hurt you. I don’t understand that.”

            Caught off guard, Leonard somehow managed to hide his surprise at the fierceness in Pavel’s voice. It reminded Leonard a lot of Jim during their academy days, ready to fight all the memories that gnawed at Leonard so close on the heels of his divorce. Jim had never been able to understand why anyone would hurt or leave Leonard, either; he supposed that was why he’d gotten stuck with Jim.

            “Love’s just like that,” he said, chest too tight for it to sound easy.  “Digs in sometimes and doesn’t let go, even when there’s nothing left to hold onto that doesn’t hurt. Doesn’t have to make sense.”

            Pavel didn’t respond immediately, and when Leonard glanced over, his jaw was tight, eyes half closed and fixed on picking at his own thumb while he obviously tried to sort out his thoughts. Leonard let him think, took the opportunity to just observe, to watch the beat of his pulse in the curve of his neck, the slightly-too-fast rise and fall of his chest, the play of the lichen light over the strip of midriff exposed where the Telk shirt had ridden up just-so.

            “What happened?” Pavel asked at last, snapping Leonard’s attention back to his face. Concern colored every line of his furrowed brow, the same way it used to do Jim’s, and Leonard wondered if maybe this was just how friendships started- one person asking too-personal questions until they knew too much to let go again. He didn’t have many friendships to compare to. “If you loved her, and she loved you?”

            His breath stuck in his chest at the uncomfortable reminder, and he scrubbed a hand through his damp hair to stall, scratching lightly at the back of his head. He’d asked himself that question a thousand times, and had never come up with a satisfactory answer. The kid was right- he had loved Pamela, and he liked to think that she had loved him, but love wasn’t always enough. In some small way, he was glad no one had taught that lesson to Pavel yet. Maybe if he had warning, no one ever would.

            “Just because you love someone, doesn’t mean it’s good for you,” Leonard said, heart twisting a little.  “Doesn’t guarantee it’ll work. I’m pretty much proof of that.” He didn’t laugh; it would have come out bitter, and he didn’t want that for Pavel.

            “I see.” Pavel frowned, but dropped his gaze back to his hands.

            At the guilt in Pavel’s tone, Leonard blew out a breath and shrugged one shoulder in surrender, deciding maybe Pavel deserved a legitimate answer over a jaded attempt at advice. At best, knowing more of Leonard’s story might help him – help _them_ – to deal with the Telk’s meltdowns. At the very least, maybe the kid would realize how broken he was, and that would make it a little easier to keep his distance.

            “Hell, if I knew why it didn’t work, maybe it would have,” he offered, cracking open the door to the conversation just a little and pulling Pavel’s tentative attention back to him. “I think we just… wanted different things. I made some mistakes- we _both_ made mistakes that couldn’t be fixed, and we let it get between us until she-“ He cut himself off, throat tight. “She had enough of me, I guess. Got tired of picking fights.”

            Pavel searched his face for something, though Leonard couldn’t guess what or if he found it, but he nodded either way. “You fought a lot?”

            “Enough,” Leonard said, the familiar void of past inadequacies creeping under his skin, the crawling feeling of being trapped speeding up his breath a little. He hated to think about the fights, hated to think about the shouting matches, and the nights spent at the bar to avoid going home. “Sometimes that’s all there was. Sometimes… well, she doesn’t pick many fights anymore. That’s pretty nice.”

            Hesitantly, Pavel reached across the small space between them and laid one hand over his and Leonard’s breath caught in surprise. “You deserve better than not picking fights, Leonard,” Pavel said softly.

            Leonard didn’t move, couldn’t have moved if the place was on fire. He had not _at all_ been expecting that- an empty apology, maybe, or a declaration that it was in the past, but not a reassurance of his worth.  “It’s a little late for that,” he said, hushed, ready to argue. “Too much damage done.”

            “You are a doctor,” Pavel said, thumb moving absently over the back of his wrist, leaving a trail of tingles in its wake. “You heal so many people, but not yourself?”

            A small huff of laughter punched out of Leonard at that. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, Pavel. It’s not something I can fix. Not sure anyone can.”

            Pavel’s mouth turned into a little moue and he pulled away, rolling out of the bed completely. Alarmed, Leonard watched him skirt the end of the bed and head for where their fleet uniforms were resting, returned from being cleaned by the Telk, and neatly folded atop one another as though they belonged together. He pulled Leonard’s shirt from the pile and rifled through it before coming back to plop down on the side of the bed.

            Leonard fixed him with a confused look as Pavel extended one empty hand to him, uncertain if he was supposed to take it. Pavel solved the mystery for him. “The first time I came to your sickbay, I burned this hand. It was a very bad burn. You remember this?”

            “Yeah,” Leonard confirmed. “Third degree electrical burns on your fingers and palm. You almost burned through a tendon, and didn’t have the nerves left to feel it.”

            Pavel smiled and ducked his head a little, a subtle blush spreading over his cheeks, obviously still a little embarrassed about the incident. Leonard wondered what he’d think if Pavel knew he’d gone down to engineering to have Scotty’s ear off about being more careful with the kid. Scotty had avoided him for weeks afterward.

            “Yes,” Pavel said. “I could have lost function in that hand, but now it is as good as new. You told me I was lucky, because you were there to fix me.” He opened his other hand, revealing Leonard’s fleet medical badge, which he pulled apart and clipped to his own Telk shirt before looking up again. “I can return that kindness, now. I will find a way to fix what hurts you.”

            Leonard let out a soft puff of amusement, too sad to be laughter, and wondered exactly how deep this kid’s well of optimism went. “Just like that?” he asked.

            “No,” Pavel said honestly, and Leonard’s belly gave a little swoop at the unexpected answer. “My mother used to say _Pasha_!” He gave a little shake of his finger, clearly doing an impersonation. “ _Nothing worth doing is ever easy_!” He smiled, chin dipping in a mix of fond memory and embarrassment, and he looked up at Leonard earnestly. “I think you are worth helping, Leo. That is what friends do.”

            “Friends,” Leonard echoed automatically, and he didn’t miss the flicker of uncertainty shadow Pavel’s eyes.

            “Yes,” Pavel agreed firmly, the shadow gone as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by something mischievous that immediately put Leonard on high alert. “We became friends after… hm, the second kiss.”

            Leonard snorted and rolled his eyes, heart pattering far too quickly at the mention of their kisses. Clearly, Pavel wanted to treat the physical aspect of their stay here lightly, and Leonard could do no less. This was supposed to be a professional arrangement. This was supposed to not affect them personally. He could do that. He could joke about this.

            “That so?” he managed, amazed that he’d somehow kept his voice steady, even light-hearted.

            Pavel nodded solemnly, his amusement bright in his eyes now, and Leonard actually did steady at that. Pavel was teasing him. “I think yes. Definitely by the third. Or the sixth. We must be very good friends.”

            “I’d be a fool to argue,” Leonard said, giving in to the humor of the moment. At least he could be sure their situation hadn’t wrecked anything between them. Hell, maybe it had actually made things better, if Pavel considered them friends. “Guess I gotta let you try, if we’re friends now. Just… don’t be too disappointed if your master plan to fix me doesn’t work out.”

            “I am Russian,” Pavel said simply, completely confident. “Master plans were invented in Russia, you know. It will work.”

            At that, Leonard laughed and, for just a split-second, caught himself hoping Pavel was right.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Did you miss me?? I certainly missed you!! This one's a little longer to make up for skipping out on you for NaNoWriMo (made it to 50k tho!), and I hope it was worth the wait!


	9. The Reservoir

 

 

 

            Despite the fact that he had lain awake thinking far too many thoughts long after Leonard had fallen asleep, Pavel blinked awake first. The fuzzy blue light of the lichen had begun to turn yellow with the dawn. Pavel had wondered several times how it knew. He thought maybe if he could bring some home with him to Hikaru, his friend could tell him. If nothing else, Hikaru would love to have something new to examine, especially something so beautiful.

            This morning, Pavel did not wonder how the lichen knew what time it was.

            Instead, all of his attention narrowed down to the warm body curled against his back, to the heavy arm slung comfortably over his waist. Leonard was still fast asleep, his breathing just this side of a snore, his nose buried in the nape of Pavel’s neck.

            Pavel’s eyes closed again, breath soft in his chest at the realization of just how close they were. Some part of him said that he should end it, move away and let Leonard have his space back, even in sleep. The rest of him reminded him that it was Leonard’s arm holding him in place, not the other way around. The latter logic won out- he had wished for this so many times, he could not bear to stop it now, even if it could only last until Leonard woke.

            In the ensuing stillness, memory of the night prior reared up behind his closed lids, of how forward he had been to swear he would care for Leonard, to ease what hurt him. Days ago this closeness would have been too much for what they were, but Leonard had agreed that they were friends now. Judging by the press of his body so close to Pavel’s, how comfortable he seemed in Pavel’s space in sleep, Pavel believed him.

            They were perhaps, all things considered, slightly more than friends.

            Glad that no one else could see him blush, Pavel ducked his head in embarrassment anyway when heat flushed through his body at the thought.

            The motion bowed his back just-so against Leonard, and he froze, eyes flying open, a small gasp stuck in his throat.

            Oh, he thought, heart stuttering. _Oh_.

            Asleep. Leonard was still asleep and not possibly in control of his body’s reaction. Pavel knew that, he did. _It’s just a function of biology_ \- Leonard had said so himself just yesterday. Like it had not been the moment Pavel thought he had ruined everything by getting too close.

            Knowing that and having the strength to ignore the sensation of Leonard’s hard length pressed up against the line of his ass were two completely different things. Knowing that and not wanting to stay right here wrapped up in Leonard’s comforting warmth, pleasantly aroused and so close… He let out a shaky breath and flexed his hips back against Leonard’s solid weight just the tiniest bit, just to feel him before he would have to pull away.

            He froze when Leonard grunted and weighted his arm down harder, clearly meant to still him, grumbling a slurry _cut it out, kid_ against the back of his neck. He sounded the sort of cranky that came with being woken up suddenly, voice still thick and rough from sleep. The sound shivered down his spine, heedless of the words’ intentions.

            Pavel’s skin tingled at the rasp of Leonard’s long stubble on his neck, almost long enough to start turning soft. “Sorry,” he breathed out, waiting for Leonard to withdraw his arm and separate them the way Pavel desperately did not want to do first.

            One heartbeat, two, three, and Pavel realized that Leonard had not pulled away, had not moved at all, his breath still warm against Pavel’s nape. Swallowing down nerves, Pavel shifted again as though preparing to get up, giving a tiny roll of his hips just to feel one last bit of friction against Leonard. The motion earned him a guttural noise from the other man, the kind that shot right through Pavel to set heat curling in his belly. He fell still. If he had not been hard before, he was now, and he _wanted_ this so much he nearly said so aloud.

            Almost of their own accord, his hips rolled back again and this time Leonard pressed back, just the tiniest bit, maybe just Pavel’s imagination. A soft noise escaped Pavel, barely a breath, almost a sigh, and he considered not stopping. He considered suggesting the Telk would be irritated if he showed up like this again, if both of them showed up like this today. He considered _begging_.

            Before he could, Leonard put an end to it the way Pavel knew he should have done himself, slipping his arm from around Pavel to move away. He stroked one big hand down Pavel’s flank as he went, trailing heat in its wake, and then he was rolling wordlessly out of the bed to head for the safety of the bath, distancing himself from Pavel. A deep ache settled into Pavel’s chest, one that he buried under the logic of their situation. He should not have let his desires get the better of him, had clearly made Leonard uncomfortable.

            As soon as he heard the soft susurration of water in the tub, Pavel dared to look. Leonard stood at the tub’s edge watching it fill, his clothing slung messily over the wall that stood between them now. Pavel opened his mouth to say something, anything, apologize or explain or ask if Leonard was okay, when Leonard beat him to it.

            “Sorry,” he said to the tub, one hand scrubbing at the back of his head. He could not even look at Pavel.

            “I’m not,” Pavel said, and was treated to Leonard looking over whiplash fast. Pavel did his best to sound nonchalant. “Do you not like being close to me?”

            Leonard’s shoulders tightened and even in the soft lichen light, Pavel could see the faint dusting of rouge under his skin at the blatant question. “It’s not- it’s- I don’t want to be inappropriate with you, Pavel. Okay?”

            Somehow Pavel did not flinch at the declaration, the gentle rejection. He’d known that. On some level he had known that, it was just that sometimes it seemed… less true. Sometimes it seemed like maybe if he said or did the right thing at the right moment, something would give. Sometimes it seemed like Leonard wanted to do the same, and watch Pavel give instead, but always these kinds of words followed.

            Nodding, Pavel finally sat up. “I understand,” he said softly, gaze dropping. Understanding did not make it any easier. “You were not inappropriate with me,” he added, feeling his cheeks heat. “And, it will probably help us.”

            “Help us…?” Leonard asked hesitantly.

            “With the Telk,” Pavel clarified and when Leonard gave no indication of further understanding, he continued. “We know that they sense chemicals, and can tell when… our physical states change. There is a good chance they will be able to tell when we have been in such close proximity.”

            Leonard stared at him for a long moment, brows drawn as he processed that, and then: “You think they can smell us cuddling?”

            Pavel laughed, quickly covering his mouth to cut the startling noise short. He had not ever expected to hear such words from Leonard. “Yes,” he agreed, when he could do so without laughing again. “To some degree. Do you not think so?”

            Leonard’s brow furrowed in thought a moment, his eyes going just a little unfocused the way they always did when he was spinning out all the possibilities and testing them against what he knew. With the amount of time Leonard spent on the bridge being asked conundrum questions by the captain, Pavel had been privy to this face often and, like the captain usually did, he just waited for the conclusion.

            Eventually, Leonard turned around to shut off the flow of water. “I suppose it’s possible, maybe even makes sense,” he said, giving one little nod to himself before looking back at Pavel. Something flickered in his eyes but it disappeared before Pavel got a chance to identify it. “It doesn’t bother you? Gettin’ that close?”

            “No,” Pavel said honestly, meeting his gaze. After a beat, he pulled his courage together, every bit of it, and added: “I think that much should be obvious to a doctor.”

            The captivating flush of soft pink along Leonard’s cheeks and down his throat held Pavel’s considerable attention so acutely he missed Leonard’s reply. When he looked back up to his eyes, Leonard was staring at him expectantly, obviously awaiting an answer.

            “Sorry?” Pavel said quickly, feeling his own cheeks heat a little at being caught.

            Leonard gave a little roll of his eyes, but his voice held no ire when he spoke. “Does it bother you up here?” he repeated, tapping his own temple in demonstration. “Yesterday you… well, it upset you.”

            _Yesterday before I spent the entire day thinking about all the ways that moment could have gone differently_ , Pavel thought with a barely contained sigh. Yesterday, before he had spent the day sitting across from Leonard, feet, legs, knees touching, hands brushing. Yesterday, before Leonard had softly told him _it’s okay_ and _we’re friends now_. Yesterday, before Leonard was the one wrapped around him instead.

            “A lot has happened since then,” Pavel said, electing to tell at least a part of the truth. Leonard seemed to like it better when he was truthful. “And today, we are friends. It does not bother me anymore. I think it is safer, to stay close, but if you are not comfortable with this…”

            Leonard conceded with a wry smile, waving off whatever else Pavel had to say. “No, you’re right. We are friends, and if it doesn’t bother you, then it doesn’t bother me,” he said, and Pavel recognized the end of a conversation when he heard it, so he just nodded.

            That was fine, he figured as he watched Leonard almost disappear behind the wall into the bath. It made a certain amount of sense that Leonard’s discomfort stemmed mainly from someone else’s. He was exactly that sort of man. Some small part of Pavel flurried with hope at the notion, to think that as long as Pavel was comfortable with intimacy, Leonard might relax a little. Might even enjoy it, too, while it lasted.

            He sighed. He could dream.

 

* * *

 

            Pavel looked over at the pair of Telk that slid onto two of the unoccupied chairs at the long table he and Leonard had been working at all morning. A quick glance around the room told him which pair was missing from their station, and he rooted around his memory for their names. Roon and Qin, his mind supplied. He had yet to hear their names said together and, still uncertain of the etiquette or process, he chose to address them separately.

            “Hello, Roon. And Qin,” he said, the quiet words drawing Leonard’s attention away from his note taking.

            “Hello,” they said in unison, and the one Pavel thought was Roon continued alone. “Are you well?”

            “Very well,” Pavel agreed, smiling. These two, as with most of the medical staff, at least knew and understood some of the human facial expressions well enough that smiling actually meant something. “Are you well?”

            “Agree,” Roon said, and Pavel’s smile broadened. Even after days of hearing it, he still enjoyed the Telk _agree_ as their affirmative answer. Neither he nor Leonard had tried to correct them, so even if he had not caught the tiny curl of Leonard’s lips, he would have assumed the other man felt the same. “Question?”

            “Go ahead,” Pavel invited, after shooting a quick glance to Leonard for permission. There was no way to tell what kind of question any of the Telk would have at any time. They had answered dozens of simple questions today alone.

            The two changed a series of colors and Qin made a high, squeaky noise before Roon spoke again. “Humans kissing for balance?”

            Pavel took a moment to parse what they were probably asking, but McCoy was faster. “Yeah, we do that.”

            They had not done that today, Pavel thought, wondering if the question had not actually been a request instead.

            The Telk both made a squeaky noise and changed to a yellow-green color that somehow did not seem upset. “Then why not kissing?”

            Pavel frowned a little, despite his best effort not to; sometimes he did not appreciate being right. He had thought they were fine, that they must have similar levels of everything currently. Pavel had actually started helping Leonard with one of his tests on the self-learning vaccine, and so he had not spared a thought to anything else between them. For the last two hours he had been caught up reading technical medical notes translated from the Telk written language to standard on his PADD.

            “We are not balanced?” he asked, tipping his head and shifting his leg so it came back into contact with Leonard’s under the table, pleased when Leonard pressed into the touch without even seeming to notice. He supposed maybe they had lost contact, and perhaps that was the problem. There was, however, no hum in the air, no trill, or even a general feel of anxiety from the medical staff. Only these two, asking questions.

            The Telk shifted in a distinctly uncomfortable fashion, expressions unnaturally still as their colors faded to yellow-orange. “Disagree. You are balanced,” Qin admitted, turning a color Pavel had never seen and had no word for, and both he and Leonard recoiled slightly from the unfamiliar sight. The reaction did not seem to bother the Telk at all. “We only… enjoy to see human affections. For learning.”

            Across the table, Leonard made a noise stuck between a laugh and a squawk, and Pavel had to fight laughter, himself. They were asking for _demonstrations_ , as if Leonard and Pavel were some kind of instructors, and Pavel could not help but remember telling Leonard they needed practice. With the way Leonard snuck a look at him, at the expression on his face when he did so, Pavel could only assume Leonard remembered the same.

            “Kissing isn’t- well, it’s private, you see,” Leonard tried, and at least Pavel could tell he was amused where a few days ago he had seemed miserable.

            Both Telk turned a dull shade of green and perked. “Private?” Roon asked, green morphing to a slightly brighter shade. “What is private?”

            Leonard scratched at the back of his head, face screwing up in thought. Of course the Telk would not really have a concept of privacy if they always had at least one other person with them everywhere they went. Leonard’s awkward “It’s when you’re alone,” did not appear to clear up any of the confusion.

            “Kissing is usually done when humans are in a place with just their mate,” Pavel tried instead. “When we are in a room with only our mate, we call this private.”

            The Telk turned a smooth, mint green and gave little body flails that Pavel had begun to figure as equivalent to nodding. “Private, agree. Then, how are not-private affections?”

            Pavel exchanged a bit of a lost look with Leonard, scraping at his suddenly very empty brain for ways people showed affection that did not involve further physical intimacies. He had already initiated too many of those, had already put Leonard in uncomfortable positions too often to do so again. Pavel had not had much experience in the way of actual relationships- he had not had the time at the Academy and once on the Enterprise he had seen too many partnerships fray and break in such close quarters. As it turned out, spending all shift around a person and then having nowhere to go afterward to have time alone appeared to have a generally deleterious effect on couples.

            It was little wonder that Starfleet did not see fit to regulate most personal relationships; they tended not to survive being put in a tin can for months or even years. It was part of the reason Pavel had never attempted to act on how he felt about Leonard. He had been afraid that the same would prove true of him and the oft-cranky doctor.

            But, they had spent the last few days in each others’ pockets, as Leonard said, and it seemed to have no ill effect on them. If anything, the opposite had happened, and they had only become better friends. Pavel thought maybe some actions were the same, between friends and lovers, and he plucked at the first idea that came to mind.

            “We give gifts,” he said, drawing the attention of both Telk as well as Leonard. He gave a little shrug to the latter. “On Earth, humans give one another flowers, or food treats, or small trinkets we think our mate will like.”

            This caused an instant flurry of excited noises and flailing that inevitably caused the rest of the room to give up the pretense of not listening in to their conversation. They found themselves suddenly surrounded by almost the entire room’s population. Pavel watched Oma tap Aru to get their attention, the two of them talking quickly with colors and gestures before Aru gave Pavel a sharp look. Pavel ducked his head a little- he had not meant to interrupt work, but Omaru did not come over to stop them or join them.

            “Prohvi do this,” Qin said, overly-loud before quieting once the color-changing, chattering Telk that had joined them had presumably all caught up on the conversation. “Forest creatures outside of home. They dance, like you, and perform…” They trailed off, looking uncertain, obviously stuck for a word.

            “We say _torhsa_ ,” Roon said, changing a color and making a gesture at the same time. “Giving pleasure items.”

            “Oh, Lord,” Leonard said softly, his eyes closing and the barest hint of pink dusting at the tips of his ears at the phrasing. Pavel did not say aloud how adorable he found it, but he did smile and raise his eyebrows when Leonard looked at him. “They’re comparing us to animals, you know.”

            “So it would seem,” Pavel replied, still grinning.

            The Telk suddenly fell to silence, all eight of them the same shade of blue-green as they looked at Pavel and Leonard. “You have no gifts here,” commented one of them, though Pavel was not sure what their name was. “And you do not kiss. How do you affections?”

            Leonard took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and Pavel saw the same kind of shadow pass over his eyes as when he spoke about his ex-wife. Pavel’s heart gave a little twist for him as he realized that whatever experience Leonard was about to draw from had most likely come from that relationship.

            “Humans express affection in small, subtle ways,” he said carefully, slowly, so that they would have time to understand him. “You’ve seen we sometimes touch, like you do. We sometimes kiss hello or goodbye, when we intend to separate from one another.” Here, the Telk all shivered and flashed yellow, but remained quiet. The medical staff, at least, had come to terms with the idea that humans could be apart. “But we do other small things, too. We do favors for one another without being asked. We watch out for the safety of our mates when we can. We make sure they have what they need to be happy. We use terms of endearment to address one another.”

            Qin and Roon both brightened to blue. “What terms?”

            Leonard blew out a breath, shaking his head a little as if he could rattle a pet name loose by the action. “Uh… Lots of folks use Dear, or Honey, or Sugar, or Baby.”

            Pink and purple echoed through the group, one of the pairs turning orange, and then Roon leaned forward a little. “Baby means new offspring,” they said, as if maybe Leonard did not know. “You are confused.”

            When Leonard looked skyward, Pavel could practically hear his silent plea for strength from God. Pavel turned his laugh into a solid clearing of his throat, and caught a glare Leonard did not really mean. Pavel did a very poor job of suppressing his grin, lips pressed tight but eyes lit up in amusement.

            “I know that,” Leonard said. “I never understood that one either, but other folks use it.”

            Qin looked over at Roon, their colors both shifting as they gestured, a few words of the silky-soft Telk language passing between them. Qin finally touched Roon’s shoulder and then turned back to them. “What terms do you use?”

            This time when Leonard looked at him, Pavel’s belly did a little swoop. Leonard did not _use_ pet names on him, or at least he had not so far. Calling him _kid_ was not a term of endearment- it was a reminder that nothing was going to happen. It was, from what Pavel could tell, Leonard’s way of taking a step back, rather than a step closer. He did not care much for it, but he would not insist on taking it away from Leonard. Someday, maybe, Leonard would be able to give it up of his own accord, and Pavel considered that possibility worth his patience.

            But now, _here_ , Leonard was still giving him that considering look, searching his eyes as if they held the answer. They did not. Pavel knew only a few words in Standard that served as terms of endearment, and Leonard had gotten most of them already. He scraped to think of ones he had heard in his own mother tongue, but quickly discarded the translations as words far more likely to make Leonard laugh than anything else.

            “Sweetheart,” Leonard said, sounding just as uncertain as Pavel had felt about his own words. Pavel smiled, amused. “Darlin’,” Leonard continued, letting his drawl freely curl the word in a way that sent a little flutter through Pavel’s belly. He wanted to hear that one again, when they were alone, wanted to hear it stressed and broken over a shuddering breath.

            He could feel the heat in his cheeks, and knew he was blushing fiercely over the thought with Leonard looking right at him.

            “Beautiful,” Leonard added quietly, gently, and Pavel found he could not look away- no matter what his own face was doing, he wanted to sear Leonard’s soft expression into his memory, just in case he never got another chance.

            Swallowing down his heart in his throat, Pavel managed to find his voice again. “We shorten names, too,” he reminded Leonard. “Leo. Len.”

            “Pasha,” Leonard said, and Pavel could not help smiling. He had only mentioned that word in passing, as something his mother would say in short, but he was pleased Leonard remembered. Maybe he would teach him proper diminutives later, when they no longer had an audience.

            The Telk all began to murmur, their colors still shifting with every word. Pavel spared a glance for them, remembering that they had an audience, and Qin said: “Our names are short. We will use other words. How to make these words?”

            Pavel looked over at Leonard, who gave a little shrug, so Pavel answered instead. “Most of them are food words, or animal words. In Russia, my home, we say Бублик, which is a kind of bread, and Котенок, which is a small, cute animal.”

            Qin looked dubiously at Leonard, up and then down. “Why?”

            “I don’t know,” Pavel said, partly because it was true and partly because he had just realized that, like Leonard’s problem with explaining fictional storytelling to the children, trying to explain calling someone by an untrue word was probably beyond the understanding of the Telk. Leonard was not bread, nor a small, cute animal, and Pavel had no way to reconcile the words with the intention to a society that considered lying a capital offense.

            “It’s a play on words,” Leonard said slowly, and Pavel got the feeling he had come to the same conclusion. “In Standard, many words have more than one meaning. For example, the word sweet can be used to describe something sugary, which Pavel is not, but it can also be used to describe something kind or nice, which Pavel is. We use some words to compare a person to the word- bread is soft and warm and many people like it.”

            Excitement shivered around the Telk momentarily as they seemed to understand the concept. Roon piped up. “And Pavel is soft and warm and many people like Pavel.”

            “Exactly,” Leonard said, sounding relieved.

            “But you like Pavel the most,” Roon continued, and agreement murmured through the Telk. “Pavel is your most bread.” This conclusion sent the Telk into a pink flurry of excitement and pleasure before either of them could say anything. Roon said something in their native tongue that silenced everyone, and then they put their tentacled hands upon Qin’s shoulders and said, “You are my most kaltha,” which sent the Telk into another flurry of voices and colors and touching.

            Pavel could not help but laugh at the misinterpretation, and Leonard just closed his eyes, his brow scrunching. He gave a withering look to Pavel, which only made it impossible to stop laughing, though he did manage to wheeze, “You are my most bread, too, Leo,” before completely losing it.

            When the Telk finally calmed to a steady pink-purple and quieted, there was an even, pleasant thrum that left Pavel’s skin tingling. He was not sure what differentiated this thrum from the panic thrum that Leonard usually set off, but he could almost _feel_ the difference. Roon and Qin settled back closest to them once more.

            “This is very good,” Roon said, keeping their voice down now, with a surreptitious look to where Omaru were still seated at their station, seemingly ignoring the entirety of their staff not doing their jobs. “But, we do not see you perform torhsa or give favors or say pet names. How else do you perform affections?”

            Leonard did not even look up from his PADD, obviously having had enough of explaining anything to the Telk for the rest of the day. Pavel considered the question carefully, the things he had seen and the things he had done and the things that he knew of how people behaved in relationships, and in that light, the answer seemed obvious.

            “We say it,” he said simply, and at the confused yellows that shimmered through the group, he continued. “Your language has colors and chemicals and gestures and words. Humans do not communicate with colors or chemicals, and our gestures are nonessential to communication. We use verbal or written language only. When we want to express affection, we say certain phrases.”

            The Telk turned alarmed, almost-offended shades of orange-yellow at the notion. “What phrases?” Qin demanded, sounding affronted. Pavel managed not to laugh.

            “The best one is _I love you_ ,” Pavel explained patiently. “But we say it in different ways. I love you, I care about you, I want you…” He faltered when he noticed Leonard had looked up at him without shifting his position at all.

            “We don’t always say it plain like that, Darlin’,” he said, stressing the word and rewarding Pavel’s blush with a smile. Leonard was apparently no stranger to payback. “Some people use different words, like _buckle up_ and _stay safe_ and _I miss you_. Some can’t say I love you with words at all, so they say it in other ways. The way they look at someone, or the way they say their name. They say it by staying. They say it by coming back, after going away. By always coming home.”

            Pavel swallowed, staring back at Leonard and trying to find some kind of response, to find words that would rescue them from the seriousness of the moment, but he came up empty-handed. He could not focus with Leonard’s soft gaze on him, his gentle words still hanging heavy in the air between them. Home.

            As much as Pavel wanted to go home, it would mean leaving this behind, and if he was being honest, he did not want that quite yet. Here on this world, separated from the rest of their lives, from friends and coworkers and duty, they had an unparalleled opportunity to know one another without filters. Pavel had seen more sides to Leonard in the past few days than he had been privy to in the years since they had first set sail into the stars, and every time he learned something new, he loved Leonard a little more.

            And maybe, just _maybe_ , he thought that Leonard might do the same for him, might be close enough here to learn to love Pavel back.

            The shift of Qin leaning closer sounded too loud in the utter silence that had descended. “Are you saying it now?” they whispered, breaking the moment entirely

            “Yes,” Leonard said softly, like he meant it, and Pavel’s laugh stuck in his throat.

            For one stuttered, breathless heartbeat, Pavel forgot that they were only pretending. He forgot everything except the beautiful brown of Leonard’s eyes and the echo of his agreement still ringing in Pavel’s ears and the ghost sensation of Leonard’s lips on his.

            Then reality faded back in and he forced a rueful smile, remembering that their situation called for such bold declarations. Of course he would tell the Telk they were communicating their love. He had to. They both had to, at this point, and Pavel knew he should be happy that at least Leonard felt more comfortable with the charade. At least he could say such things with a straight face, and even Pavel might have believed it if he did not know their secret.

            “Yes,” he agreed gently. Leonard did not need to know that he, at least, meant it for real. Movement over Leonard’s shoulder caught his eye and he straightened up. “Incoming,” he murmured, tipping his chin in indication.

            Leonard turned to see, and the other Telk scattered like naughty children when they saw Omaru coming their way. He wondered why it had taken them so long, and figured that maybe they had been doing actual work, or perhaps trying to allow their staff a small break without having their superiors too close to relax. He smiled at them as they reached the work bench, noticing that their blue colors matched in shade for once. Despite the happy color, Pavel still felt like they were about to be scolded for distracting the other Telk.

            “Doctor, Lieutenant,” Aru greeted, and Pavel winced. They had not been called by their titles in days. It was a sharp reminder of where they stood, both with the Telk and one another. “You have performed teaching to our staff?”

            “Yeah,” Leonard agreed gruffly, sitting so stiffly that Pavel took notice and went on alert. Something was up. “Just, ah…. Just telling them about the human custom of calling a mate by a different name.”

            “A nickname?” Oma said softly, tipping their head. Pavel wondered where they had heard the term if they did not know the concept. It occurred to him that perhaps they _did_ know the concept, and that this might account for why they had stayed back. The idea prickled at his skin, though he could not tell why.

            “Kind of,” Leonard hedged, and something more tickled at the back of Pavel’s mind. He remembered the children not understanding telling imaginary stories, but lost the thread before it connected.

            “You call a mate a name that is not theirs,” Oma said, not quite a question, and what must have clicked for Leonard now clicked for Pavel as well. Omaru had to have been listening in, had to have overheard their explanations, and they were very sharp- sharper, perhaps, than any of the others here. They had watched what Pavel and Leonard had just taught to the other Telk.

            “A representative word,” Pavel said, the words pulled out of him on automatic, as if he were not even the one saying them. He tried to calm himself, told himself that there was still a chance that they were just curious, as all the Telk were, about humans and their strange customs. “Humans call it metaphor. It is a shortened verbal comparison, not an untruth.”

            The steadfast, unchanging shade of blue remained, the unnatural stillness raising the little hairs down Pavel’s neck and arms. It reminded him of the time at lunch when Hara had seemed to force their colors to change to something more pleasant. He wished he could move closer to Leonard without drawing attention to it.

            “I see,” Oma said, tone unchanged. Pavel thought it sounded strained and hoped that he was only projecting his own unease.

            A tense pause ensued for one long moment, and then Aru gave a little shiver and Oma’s colors wavered to a soft brown before returning to the same eerie blue. “Please follow,” Aru said, turning away.

            “Where?” Leonard asked, not moving at all. Pavel remained seated, not willing to go anywhere alone with them while they looked and sounded so strange.

            Aru considered this, holding still, their colors shifting just the tiniest bit toward the yellow range before solidifying. “We require obtaining items,” they said vaguely. “We will take you to see where.”

            Pavel felt Leonard looking at him, and turned to see. It was good to know that he was not alone in being wary, but he could see that Leonard had no excuse for why they could not go. To refuse would alarm Omaru if they had told the truth, and only wanted to show them a store room. It would also give them away, if Omaru had ill intentions, and there were more Telk in the room than humans at the moment. At least if they were out of the room, he and Leonard might stand a chance in a fight.

            “Okay,” Leonard agreed when Pavel twitched one shoulder in a shrug to silently communicate all of that. “Sure, lead the way.”

            Pavel clambered out of his chair and met Leonard at the end of the table, stepping close to him, but not close enough to restrict his movement if something happened. For once, he did not reach for Leonard’s hand, wanting for them both to have their hands free. Oma gave them both a searching look, and then turned to follow Aru. Pavel glanced uncertainly to Leonard, and then followed after, Leonard right behind him.

            Aru led them out of the medical area and down one of the long, circling halls. After a while, Pavel realized that they were traveling down at a slow slant, and he made a hand motion to Leonard to communicate as much. Leonard nodded, brushing his hand down to keep the Telk from seeing. Pavel traveled in silence after that, noting the way the lichen grew, and how the gaps left for doorways lessened in number and then disappeared completely. Wherever they were going, it was secluded deep underground and getting colder.

            Pavel was just about to ask where they were going when the tunnel came to an abrupt end at a lightless wall. Aru trailed to a stop less than a meter from it, but did not turn around immediately. Oma did, looking over them with an expression Pavel did not recognize, their fingers twisted up around one another in front of them.

            “Where are we?” Pavel asked, the words bouncing off the walls in a way they did not in the upper tunnels.

            Aru did not answer at first, just reached their hand out to splay their tentacles over the stone. They glanced over their shoulder to Oma, who turned at the same moment to see. Oma nodded, and Aru took a deep breath that they let out slowly.

            “The bottom,” they said, and the door began to peel open, the gritty sound echoing all over like the skittering of thousands of tiny insects. Pavel did not realize he had moved until his arm touched Leonard’s, a spot of warmth in the chill.

            As the doorway opened, blue light spilled into the corridor from behind it. The lichen on the other side glowed with an intensity they had not yet seen. Beyond the door, the tunnel curved sharply to the right and continued out of sight. Aru looked back once before moving forward and disappearing around the bend. Oma hesitated, only moving when they did, to accompany them through the short passage.

            And it _was_ a short passage, Pavel realized as they rounded the bend and the tunnel gave way to an absolutely immense cavern.

            He stopped dead at the mouth of the tunnel, eyes tracking up to the ceiling a dozen meters above their heads. Every centimeter of the ceiling and walls was covered with a variety of glowing plants, arranged in sections so carefully that it looked like some kind of vertical, bioluminescent herbgarden, framed in the glowing lichen that grew everywhere else, its tidy sections completely unnatural.

            Covering most of the cavern floor were more plants, everything from short, leafy greens to some kind of tall, thin tree whose bean-shaped pods nearly brushed the ceiling. Everything, from the leaves to the stems to the flowers to the roots that disappeared into the dark soil under their feet, glowed in neon colors. Like the lichen, some of the plants shifted their colors to some rhythm beyond Pavel’s observation or understanding.

            Pavel had been to a lot of planets since joining Starfleet, but this was the first time he felt like he had stepped into an alien’s fairytale book. Everything else faded to background noise as he got caught up in marveling at the sights all around them, drawn in by the strangeness and beauty.

            The path they were on narrowed as it wound out from the tunnel toward water so still it looked like smooth, black glass. He took a hesitant step forward, then glanced to Omaru, who were just watching them both in silence. When they offered no protest or cautions, Pavel crossed the distance between the tunnel and the water’s edge. Leonard followed at his heel, trailing to a stop beside him to stare down into the water. Pavel knelt and touched the surface with one finger, surprised to find the temperature lukewarm instead of cold.

            “My god…” Leonard breathed, watching the ripples smooth out as they traveled away from Pavel’s finger.

            Pavel understood the sentiment- though the bottom looked to be only a few feet away, the disturbance of the surface tension had brought the reservoir’s true depth into sharp relief. It had to be at least fifty meters deep, the water so clear it was easy to see all the glowing plants and structures that covered the bottom, a few of them shivering in the slightest of currents.

            Several meters off the steep shore stood two structures that looked vaguely familiar, though Pavel knew of no way that was possible. They had never seen any water sources beyond what flowed into their room through the bathtub tap. He wondered if this reservoir was where all of the water in the compound came from, and if any of it got recycled, and what fed it if not. Though the water stretched fifty or sixty meters to the far side of the cave, the water was clear enough to see all the edges, and he could find no orifice to suggest water entered or left. There had to be something, or there would be no current.

            “What is this place?” Pavel asked, whispering even though only his awe told him to do so.

            “It’s beautiful,” Leonard said, still looking stunned.

            Pavel looked back at Omaru, who had remained standing at the tunnel’s exit. The eerie, solid blue they had been in the medical wing had faded to a soft, pale swirl of colors, changing with the shift of light from the cavern’s flora. They almost seemed to take their color from the glow all around themselves, and it made them look ethereal in a way the Telk never had.

            “This is where kil’ta are grown,” Oma said softly, touching Aru’s shoulder before crossing over to where Pavel and Leonard were. “To avoid mistakes in their growth, this place is off limits to the rest of the sector. Barupai come down to check the growth of the kil’ta, but even that is rare. Of our staff, only Aru and I are allowed to come here. We are alone, now.”

            A little shiver of fear spindled down Pavel’s spine at the reminder of why he had been afraid. Aru joined them as Pavel clambered to his feet again, keenly aware of the fact that Omaru had just taken them so far below the surface that even if the Enterprise returned this second, it would never find them. To even have a chance, they would have to get through Omaru, who had both come to stand between them and the exit. He let out a shaky breath and moved a little closer to Leonard.

            “You grew all this?” Leonard asked, steady and clearly on the same page as Pavel regarding their companions. All Pavel could hear on repeat in his head was Yewhara telling them these two were responsible for the murder of babies. Surely, two alien adults would barely ping their radar.

            “Yes,” Oma said slowly, looking between them. The hairs on the back of Pavel’s neck stood on end at the change in their language use, first in structure and now in use.  “Some of it was here when we arrived, but much of it we brought in from other areas and cultivated ourselves. We harvest them, and the bacterial colonies they protect, for many purposes, from medicines to poisons for hunting. Some of these plants are very dangerous- another reason why no one comes down here. We are unlikely to be discovered.”

            Pavel swallowed at the mention of poisons. “You wanted us alone,” Pavel ventured, hoping he was misreading the situation, hoping they _both_ were, if Leonard’s stiff body language could tell him anything about the other man’s thoughts. “Why?”

            Oma glanced to Aru, who gave a little shiver, but their colors remained the same, no change to the pale, shifting reflection of the glow. Oma bowed their head a little in acquiescence to something unspoken, and then looked back to them. “What you were doing, up there, was very… dangerous. To teach the Telk to use untrue words to refer to one another…” Oma cast their gaze down to the soil. “It cannot be helped now, but it is regrettable you have done this.”

            “We’re in trouble,” Pavel concluded, close enough to Leonard now to feel the heat radiating from his arm. This was it, then. They’d given themselves away. “We’re in trouble with you.”

            “Yes,” Aru said plainly, finally speaking and sounding immensely relieved that they had been understood so quickly. “So you understand.”

            This was not, strictly speaking, how Pavel had envisioned his death, but he found himself strangely calm in the face of it. He slipped his hand into Leonard’s, and warmth curled in his chest when Leonard automatically threaded their fingers and held tight for a second before letting go. They were ready.

            “Yes,” he said quietly as Leonard raised fists to prepare to fight. Pavel had never particularly liked phasers, but he wished he had one now. “We understand.”

            Both Oma and Aru relaxed at the words, and Aru reached to touch Oma’s arm gently, showing no signs of aggression at all. Oma let out a little breath, chest openings fluttering, and then they both just looked expectantly at Pavel and Leonard. The longer they stared without moving, the more confused and tense Pavel got, waiting for them to do _something_.

            “I don’t… actually, I don’t think I do understand,” Leonard said hesitantly, and both Telk tipped their heads. “What are you waiting for?”

            “Your questions,” Oma said softly, the bioluminescent lights playing over their pale skin. “Surely you have some.”

            Pavel looked over at Leonard, who looked back in bewilderment. “Questions?” Pavel echoed. “About what?”

            Oma and Aru exchanged a look Pavel was beginning to think indicated confusion. “About what you see,” Oma said, like it could not have been plainer.

            For a few seconds Pavel stared at them, and then at Leonard, and then at the plants and the water and the cavern around them. Leonard did the same, relaxing fractionally. Pavel could not fathom why they wanted to be asked questions about the cavern flora, but if it bought them some time, then he would ask all of the million questions he had.

            “You grew all of this yourselves?” he said, before Leonard could come up with anything. “And all of these, you use for treatments and vaccines?” Blinking, he realized why it looked so much like an herb garden- it _was_.

            Oma looked between them with that same confused expression, and then their colors darkened and changed to a dark brown. “You wish… to know about the plants,” Oma said slowly.

            “You told us to ask our questions,” Pavel reminded them. “I have a lot of questions about the plants.” If he could stall, if he could distract Omaru with questions or even get them to move from blocking the path out, they might escape.

            Aru touched Oma’s arm, their colors darkening to a soft, pleased pink-purple. “This is good, Oma.” They turned to Leonard and Pavel then. “Yes, we grew almost all of the plants here, and we use them mainly for medicinal purposes. If you would like, we can bring some sprouts back to the medical hall for you to study, Doctor McCoy. Perhaps if you had the source material to work with, you could adapt our vaccines to your people easier.”

            “Take… them back?” Leonard echoed, sounding every bit as confused as Pavel suddenly found himself. “To the lab?”

            “Yes,” Aru agreed, head tipping and colors swirling briefly. “If the plants interest you so much, you would be welcome to take specimens home with you as well.”

            “Home…” Pavel echoed, grasping onto the sudden hope that he had misread the situation. Maybe they were only being scolded where Omaru were sure no one else would hear. What Aru had said caught up with him then, sparking against his thoughts from this morning. “Yes, we would like to take some plants home with us, if you will allow it. I have a friend who will love to care for them.”

            Omaru both turned a pleased shade of purple that glimmered with reflected iridescence from the plants. “We shall harvest some for you, then,” Oma said, then hesitated. “Do you have any other questions?”

            Pavel hesitated. He had a lot of questions, actual, real questions that he did want the answers to, but his thirst for knowledge had to come second to survival. He slipped his hand into Leonard’s and held on tight. “Perhaps we can ask more once we have looked at the plants upstairs?” he suggested tentatively. “If we may be permitted, I think I would like to return to our quarters with Leonard. Alone.”

            “Of course,” Oma said quickly, moving to one of the perpendicular pathways that lead out into the network of plants. This cleared their way to the exit so easily that Pavel wondered if it was a trap. When he took a step forward, Oma tensed, and Pavel froze again, ready. “I-“ they started, and then shook their head. “Pavel, Leonard, can we trust you?” they asked, searching both their faces.

            “Trust us?” Leonard echoed softly.

            “Not to speak of what you have seen here?” Oma clarified, voice strained with nerves. “We will do what we can for you.”

            “We won’t tell anyone,” Pavel promised, not really sure what he would say about Omaru’s apparently giant secret underground lair of glowing plants. Maybe they had created it without Yewhara’s permission, which seemed intensely likely considering how prejudiced against Omaru the two had seemed to have once been. And then, because it seemed to be in order, he added: “Thank you.”

            Both Telk colored to a pretty pink, still shifting with all the bioluminescence, and Aru gave a small flail. “Enjoy your evening together. We will see you again in the morning.”

            With that blessing, Pavel took a tighter grip on Leonard’s hand, and pulled him quickly from the cavern and out to safety.

 

* * *

      

            As soon as the door had ground shut behind them, Pavel began to laugh, breathless and more than a little disbelieving. They were alive, they were safe. He could not stop laughing, barely any sound to the near-hysterical noise, bleeding out his relief with every gasp of breath. They were fine- better than fine, by his figuring.

            Behind him, Leonard slumped against the closed door and breathed a little too fast, unfocused eyes dragging up to stare at Pavel. “How can you laugh?” he asked, but he sounded every bit as relieved as Pavel felt. “I thought they were going to kill us.”

            “Me too,” Pavel rushed to assure him, and it had been terrifying in the moment. “I thought we were dead men.”

            Leonard closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the stone, exposing a long, pale neck. He let out a sigh that bordered on a laugh. “I can’t believe we got away that easy.”

            “I can,” Pavel said, and shrugged when Leonard opened bright eyes to look at him. “They were never going to harm us.”

            “How do you figure?” Leonard asked, straightening up to look at him properly.

            Pavel’s little moue lasted only a second. “I think they wanted to warn us, actually,” he explained, and at Leonard’s raised brow, he continued. “The first thing they said to us when we arrived down there was tell us about the cavern, to tell us that we were alone and would not be interrupted. Then they told us that we had done something dangerous. To kill us, it would not be beneficial to give us warning, but to warn us, it would be beneficial to be in a place with no chance of being overheard.”

            Leonard’s eyes ticked away from him the way they did when he turned his focus inward, and Pavel let him work through the new context for their situation. He enjoyed the way Leonard’s brows scrunched up as the pieces fit into place. When he looked back up, Pavel quirked half a smile at him.

            “I thought about it on the walk back here,” Pavel said quietly. “I think that they know… about us. There is no other way it makes sense. They told us, the first night, about the white Telk- I think to warn us to mind ourselves. Now, they said that they would help us, and asked if they could trust us. I thought the cavern was their secret, but it is not. _We_ are. It is a great risk for them, if they know we are not mates and do not expose us.”

            “That’s why you thanked them,” Leonard said, snapping pieces into place.

            “Yes,” Pavel said. “I was not sure what for, exactly, at the time, but I believe I understand now. We took Yewhara’s word that Omaru had killed children. Even if that is true, which I find difficult to believe tonight, we may not have the luxury of principles regarding them. Omaru may be the closest we have to allies here.”

            Leonard swallowed and nodded his agreement, and then shoved himself off the wall. “Any port in a storm, I guess,” he said, moving past Pavel and then stopping aimlessly in the middle of the room.

            Pavel watched him, but when it became evident that Leonard had no further plans, he crossed the space between them. Aware of him now, in ways Pavel was sure he had never been on the ship, Leonard shifted to keep a small amount of distance between them. If Pavel’s own body had not still been trembling with unused adrenaline, he might not have noticed the slight shiver of Leonard’s hands where they rested at his sides.

            “Are you okay?” he asked softly, not wanting to pry if Leonard did not want to talk.

            Letting out a quiet huff, Leonard shook his head, though not in disagreement. “Yeah,” he said, scrubbing his fingertips through the scruff along his jaw, and Pavel felt a little bad for him. Though far less than Leonards, Pavel’s own stubble had finally begun to itch and he could only imagine how Leonard’s almost-beard felt. Maybe they could acquire a sharp blade tomorrow to remedy it. “I just thought we were doing better.”

            “Better?” Pavel asked, too caught up in observing Leonard’s beard to follow his line of thought.

            “I thought everyone had gotten their heads on straight, after yesterday’s talk,” Leonard elaborated. “We didn’t set off any screaming fits just by walking in the door today.”

            Pavel swallowed and looked up to meet Leonard’s eyes. “I imagine this was because our chemicals were closely matched this morning,” he said softly, feeling the gentle heat of a blush on his ears and neck as he remembered why that was.

            Leonard’s cheeks flushed a matching shade and he cleared his throat. “Right,” he said, and then just stood there doing his best to look anywhere except at Pavel.

            Which was ridiculous, because they still had days to go, and if Omaru had thought it prudent to take them to the bottom of the damn world just to tell them they were in trouble, it might actually be true. They could use any help they could get, even if it meant making their own help. They were adults, more than capable of deciding where to draw which lines, of deciding what they did or did not want to do, and Pavel _wanted_ to do.

            However, he could recognize that such things might make Leonard uncomfortable still, and so instead of voicing his desires as boldly as he wanted, he did his best to temper them with their situation.

            “If you are uncomfortable with this morning because you do not like what happened, I can attempt to stay on my side of the bed,” he offered gently, even though he had not been the one plastered to someone’s back this morning. “But… if you are uncomfortable on my behalf, you should not be. I’m not uncomfortable. I like sleeping close to another person, and I do not find it… _inappropriate_ for us to act in our best interests regarding our hosts.” He took a little breath and forced himself to meet Leonard’s gaze, clamping his jaw against any further rambling.

            Leonard just stared back, barely breathing, and Pavel worried he had gone too far this time, given voice to something he ought not to have said aloud. Before he could take any of it back, Leonard made a small, helpless noise. “You’re not uncomfortable,” he said, as if the thought were unfathomable in some way. “Christ, kid… Pavel… It’s not that I don’t like-“ He cut himself off and shook his head, breaking eye contact. “It’s just… being that close, I don’t want to cross any lines. Do you understand?”

            “Yes,” Pavel said, because he could follow the logic even if he did not agree with it. “Leo, I have not drawn any lines.”

            “Yeah, well, that’s part of the problem,” Leonard said roughly, just a tad too defensively. “We haven’t talked much about what we’re doing here, and it’s driving me a little crazy trying to guess where to stop and where to go. You haven’t drawn any lines, but if we’re gonna stay here, then I need you to."

            That drew Pavel up short, his mind turning in on itself as it took apart Leonard’s words and something clicked. Perhaps, he thought, he had been going about all of this the wrong way. Leonard was a doctor, not a navigator. Exploration of the unknown, for him, required a direction, and so far Pavel had basically told him to go ‘wherever.’ Now, he was asking for a heading, and Pavel thought that maybe if he gave him a specific boundary, Leonard would see it as a destination.

            Maybe, if Pavel was careful, he could move his boundaries back a little at a time, until Leonard knew his way around him.

            “Okay,” Pavel said gently, and then held out one hand, palm up in clear invitation. When Leonard hesitated and gave him a look that said he was about to argue, Pavel added words. “You may hold my hand, Leonard.”

            Leonard rolled his eyes as he realized what Pavel was doing, but he slipped the warm, soft palm of his hand over Pavel’s and threaded their fingers. Pavel grasped lightly back, and then tugged him toward the bed. At first, Leonard dug one heel in and Pavel was afraid he would actually resist, bringing a halt to Pavel’s new plan. However, in the next instant he capitulated, body relaxing as he let Pavel lead him.

            Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, Pavel released Leonard’s hand. “And… you may sleep in the same bed with me.” He waited until Leonard had joined him, sitting with just enough of himself on the bed’s edge to technically qualify. Pavel leaned back on both hands and nodded toward the bath. “And, you may take a bath while I am in the room.”

            “Like we’ve been doing for days,” Leonard reminded him, sounding exasperated.

            “I am being _clear_ ,” Pavel said impishly, containing his grin. He did want to take Leonard’s request seriously, but he did not want Leonard to be so serious. It was a very thin line to walk. “You asked to talk about this, to draw lines for you. These are my lines. Are you going to listen to them?”

            Looking properly chastised, Leonard nodded and made a motion near his lips like closing a zipper. Pavel observed him a second longer and decided that Leonard meant it. He looked back to the bath, even though he could not see it past the half wall, telling himself that boundaries included both what Leonard _could_ do and what he _could not_ do. The latter was an infinitely more difficult construct, as Pavel could not imagine something Leonard, himself, would do that Pavel would not want.

            He let out a short breath. “I think that… you should not take a bath with me,” he said finally. This was not, strictly speaking, the entire truth- if Leonard wanted to climb into the tub with him, the only issue would be finding space. However, Pavel thought it might be easier to draw off-limits lines around _intimacy_ rather than _sex_. The latter, he had generally found, often lead to the former, and he could move those boundaries as they approached them.

            “Okay,” Leonard agreed with another little nod.

            “You may change your clothes in the same room,” he said, voice pitched to a making-a-list tone. “You may kiss me. You may…” Pavel drew the word out, thinking of the things they had already done, “touch me.”

            Leonard swallowed and asked, barely a breath: “Where?” Pavel shivered at the bold question and looked over. “You didn’t want your shoulder touched,” Leonard explained, brushing fingertips softly over the curve of his own neck where it met his shoulder, the ghost of the sensation echoing on Pavel’s skin.

            “I had no warning!” Pavel protested, but he smiled to soften the words. “But you are correct. I would prefer not to be touched there in public.” It surprised him to find this was actually true. Of all the places Leonard could easily reach while they were near others, that strip of skin was the most sensitive, the most likely to get them into trouble when Pavel could not control his body’s reaction.

            “Anywhere else?” Leonard asked.

            Pavel hesitated, running through his short list of personal erogenous zones before deciding that no, Leonard was unlikely to touch anywhere more sensitive in public. However, in the interests of their current conversation, he chose one to offer up a similar boundary. “No, but I would prefer not to be tickled,” he said, feeling a slight flush start at the tips of his ears to say it aloud.

            “Me, too,” Leonard admitted, making him feel a little better at least. “Never liked it, even as a little kid.”

            “Are you very ticklish?” Pavel asked curiously.

            Leonard shrugged. “Not particularly. Just don’t like it. There are better things to do with your hands.” He sat up a little straighter as soon as the words were out of his mouth, as soon as he saw Pavel’s answering grin. “I mean-“

            “I know what you meant, Leonard,” Pavel assured him gently. “Is there anywhere I should not touch you?”

            Pavel was glad to see Leonard give it thought as well, and then Leonard lifted his hand and splayed it in the center of Pavel’s back and pressed just enough to feel the weight of it. “Like this,” Leonard said softly, his tone telling Pavel that this was not a warning for something nice. “Pam used to do that, when we were out. Learned to hate it.”

            “Okay,” Pavel agreed, realizing that maybe this was good for _both_ of them. “Anywhere else?”

            He liked the red that crept up Leonard’s neck as he removed his hand from Pavel’s back, fingers trailing. “Nowhere you’re gonna get to in public without me noticing,” he said with a smile of his own, scratching again at his stubble.

            Pavel chuckled and scratched his own jaw in sympathy. “Maybe tomorrow we can ask for a blade to shave,” he suggested. “I have never seen you like this.”

            “For a good reason,” Leonard groused, rubbing his hand over his mouth once before dropping it to his lap again. “It’s unprofessional and itches like the devil.”

            “It looks good,” Pavel declared, and Leonard gave him a judgmental look. Pavel kept a straight face. “Very rugged.”

            “Flattery will get you nowhere,” Leonard told him, and then caught his eyes. “Thank you,” he added. “For doing this.”

            Pavel’s expression softened into a smile. “It is not that different than what we have done so far,” he pointed out.

            “It’s different,” Leonard assured him, and then clambered to his feet. Pavel wrestled down his disappointment, until he realized that Leonard was only going to his own side of the bed.

            “Leo?” Pavel asked, before his brain had caught up with his mouth to stop it. When Leonard looked at him, Pavel ducked his head a little and steeled himself to go onward. “I would tell you no if you did something I did not like or could not handle. I would stop you.”

            “I know, it’s just…” Leonard trailed off, settling carefully on the far side of the bed, and Pavel thought he might know what Leonard meant this time, too.

            “We are both, _both_ of us,” Pavel stressed, pulling Leonard’s attention up to him again, “capable of handling ourselves like adults, because we are. You want to protect me, but I do not need protecting- from anyone, you included. Do you understand?”

            “Yes,” Leonard answered, and he sounded just embarrassed enough that Pavel figured he meant it. “I’m sorry, I just-“

            Pavel held up one hand and shook his head. “Do not be sorry, be better,” he said carefully. “That is what my mother always told me. So, we shall be better.”

            Leonard studied him for a long moment, eyes tracing over him before going a little unfocused as he turned his thoughts inward. Pavel let him think for a few minutes, watching the lichen lights slowly starting to dim. When Leonard turned away to kick off his boots, he removed his own and pulled his shirt off over his head. He got up to let Leonard pull the cover back, and as soon as Leonard settled, Pavel wriggled under the blanket beside him. He made sure to leave several centimeters between them still.

            “Leonard?” he said quietly, stifling a yawn, the post-adrenaline exhaustion finally getting to him. Leonard made a noise that might have been an answer. “Is there a line?”

            Brows scrunching, Leonard lolled his head to the side to see him. “A line?” he echoed. Pavel reached up with one finger and drew an invisible line down the thin gap between them, eyes on Leonard until the other man understood and smiled. “No, Pavel. There’s no line.”

            Pavel smiled, relaxing a little as he closed the space and tucked himself against Leonard’s side. “It will be better, for tomorrow,” he reasoned when Leonard rearranged himself stiffly to allow Pavel close. “Our scents will match and the Telk will relax like they did today.”

            “If you say so,” Leonard conceded gently, relaxing a little. “Good night, Pavel.”

            “Pashenka,” Pavel mumbled sleepily over the sound of Leonard’s quickly beating heart. “You may call me Pashenka.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year to all my lovely readers! This chapter is my new-year hope for a good 2017 for all of us. We're hitting the plot and good times, so enjoy!


	10. The Razor's Edge

 

 

            Leonard woke to the soft tickle of curls at his nose and the warm press of a body against his own. This morning, however, there was no disorientation- he knew exactly where he was, knew who he had wrapped an arm around and pulled close in sleep. This morning, he didn’t feel the same spike of guilt or worry that his proximity would offend Pavel. He found himself less certain about the way Pavel hummed contentedly and flexed back against Leonard.

            He splayed one hand over Pavel’s belly and pressed down with his elbow to still him, sure that Pavel was awake, that he had rolled his hips back against Leonard’s on purpose. Yesterday he had thought it was a fluke, just half-asleep shifting, but there was no mistaking Pavel’s intent this morning. Heat thrilled down Leonard’s spine and pooled warm in his groin at the idea that he might not be alone in his desires.

            “Leo…” Pavel murmured, shifting to cover Leonard’s hand with his own. He didn’t grasp, just slotted his fingers to rest in the spaces between Leonard’s.

            Leonard let out a shaky breath, not knowing what to do with the whine in Pavel’s voice. It wasn’t begging, he told himself. It was just a name. Just _his_ name, on the edge of a breath, permanently carved into his memory the second he heard it.

            When he made no further move to inhibit Pavel’s movement, Pavel ground back against him again, slow but deliberate. Leonard bit back a moan, nose pressed gently against the back of Pavel’s head as he fought to keep from pushing back. He wanted to- wanted nothing more than to rub right back up against Pavel, let him feel just how hard he was for him, tell him in no uncertain terms how much he didn’t want to stop.

            Part of him wondered what would happen if he did exactly that.

            He knew, though. He knew that if he started, he wouldn’t want to stop. He knew that if he responded, if Pavel let him cross those lines, if he let _himself_ cross them, that he wouldn’t want to stop when their month was up. When they would finally have to return to the ship and resume being coworkers, or just friends at best, it would hurt the way nothing had in years. He was not, he had learned, the kind of man to let go of the people he allowed to get close to him.

            He knew that if he went any further now, he wouldn’t be able to go back later.

            Pavel’s fingers curled against his and he rolled his hips again, and this time Leonard couldn’t help the catch of his breath or the little buck of his hips in return. “Pavel,” Leonard warned softly. “You gotta stop that, darlin’.”

            To his credit, Pavel stilled, though his breath still came in short pants, his heartbeat thrumming under Leonard’s palm. “If you want to stop, you should not say this name to me,” he said, the words barely given any voice.

            For just a split second, Leonard considered saying it again, considered letting his tongue curl the word close to Pavel’s ear, just to see what he would do. But he knew where it would lead, and he couldn’t go there yet. He wanted more than this from Pavel, more than stolen moments of pleasure on a planet that had their backs against a wall. With reluctance and self-control he was certain even Spock would be proud of, Leonard slipped his hand from underneath Pavel’s and withdrew, rolling over to face away.

            To his credit, Pavel remained on his own side of the bed. “You are drawing a line,” Pavel said softly, turning over to face him.

            Leonard sat on the edge of the bed, feet on the lukewarm stone floor. “I have to,” he replied, scrubbing a hand through his messy hair in frustration at their situation. “For now, I have to.”

            “Why?” Pavel asked, curious tone void of accusation. “It would only be sex.”

            _Because I want more than just sex from you_ , Leonard thought helplessly, but he just sighed. They did not need that kind of awkward confession sitting between them for the rest of the month. They did not need it following them back to the ship, either. He blew out a breath and scratched at the itchy stubble on his jaw.

            “Look, kid, I don’t mind putting on a show for them – holding hands and kissing and whatever – but it’s just…” He didn’t know what it was ‘just,’ so he trailed off and shook his head. “It’s a little far, don’t you think?”

            “Not really,” Pavel said quietly. “It would be good. For them. For us.”

            “I know,” Leonard said, and that was another problem entirely. He knew how good it would be, and how much it would take from him. “Just… let me think about it, okay?”

            “Okay,” Pavel agreed, and Leonard told himself he must have imagined the note of hurt in his tone. If he’d learned anything from his disaster of a marriage, it was that he was exceptional at hearing things he wanted to hear, whether or not they were actually there.

            He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

 

* * *

 

            McCoy touched the storage unit’s next space with the little chemical device and it peeled open for him to reveal tidy stacks of glass disks, the sort the Telk used to store specimen samples. He sighed and closed it, moving to the next one, which was full of books. He’d been through almost forty of the damn things and hadn’t found a single blade in the entirety of the supplies.

            “You could ask,” Pavel said from the nearby table, a PADD in his hand and the remains of their breakfast on a dish in front of him.

            “But then I’d find it, and where’s the fun in that?” McCoy replied, opening another storage cubby to find some kind of electronic contraption that looked dangerous. He quickly closed the opening again and moved on.

            “You do not ask for directions, either, do you,” Pavel guessed. McCoy shot him a look.

            “What’d’I need directions for, that’s your job,” he said, and closed the cubby full of what he was pretty sure were topical antibiotic cream jars.

            He didn’t have to look to know Pavel rolled his eyes, so he jumped when Pavel said loudly: “Omaru!”

            “What are you doing?” Leonard hissed, turning away before he could open the next cubby.

            “My _job_ ,” Pavel said, giving him a pointed look as Omaru both shuffled up from their work benches and began to head in their direction. McCoy scowled but returned to the table just as Omaru reached them.

            “Something is wrong?” Oma asked, glancing between them, their skin a clear blue-green.

            “No,” Pavel assured them quickly. “Leo is looking for a razor- a very sharp blade.”

            Aru fluttered a few shades of yellow, but quickly joined Oma in green. “Why?”

            When Pavel looked to McCoy for help, Leonard just raised his eyebrow and kept his mouth shut. If he wanted to get the Telk involved, they could be his responsibility. McCoy had started enough screaming panics since their arrival. It was Pavel’s turn.

            Pavel frowned, but only paused for a second before explaining to Omaru. “Humans grow hair, but sometimes it grows where we do not want it to, and so we scrape it off with very sharp, flat blades. This does not hurt us, it just makes us more comfortable.”

            Oma glanced between the two of them, a curl of yellow in their blue-green, but eventually gave a little shiver. “Agree. We can provide a blade.” They moved over to the wall where the mobile supplies were kept, where McCoy had _just been_ , and put their tentacled hand upon one of the cubbies. “Here. Do you require other instruments?”

            Surprised and a little irritated that he hadn’t found the cubby first, even though it was so close to them, McCoy shook his head and then thought better of it. “A mirror?” he asked. He knew they could locate soap or something else close enough to shaving cream on their own, but their room had no mirrors and he had not seen them in the restrooms either.

            Oma tipped their head a little and looked to Aru, who shivered an odd shade of yellow and then orange and then yellow again. “A mirror?” Oma asked.

            “Yeah, for…” McCoy trailed off, his brain catching up to the conversation. The Telk all looked the same, all wore the same clothing, and had no reason to be alone, ever. They didn’t have hair, and didn’t, as far as McCoy had seen, use any kind of beauty products. They had no need at all for mirrors. “Uh,” he said cleverly.

            “It is okay,” Pavel dismissed from across the table. He smiled when McCoy looked at him. “We do not need a mirror. I can help you do this.”

            McCoy’s belly tightened at the thought of letting anyone that close to his throat with a razor. Jim had done it for him twice, at the Academy, while his wrist was healing from a break it had gotten saving Jim from a bar fight. McCoy would still have the scar, half an inch from his carotid, if he hadn’t had access to a questionably borrowed dermal regenerator. He was not keen on repeating the experience.

            “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he said carefully, not wanting to sound like he didn’t trust Pavel. He did.

            “It is better than doing it yourself,” Pavel reasoned. “I have done it before. I learned by doing this for my father, since I was a child. I will be careful.”

            McCoy could have done without that particular comparison, but he couldn’t exactly argue in front of Omaru, even if they already knew they weren’t mates. There were still other Telk in the room, probably listening with far more interest than was polite.

            “Okay,” he conceded.

            He tapped the device to the cubby where Oma indicated and it opened to reveal several small compartments filled neatly with blades of various shapes and sizes. He plucked a flat scalpel blade from one of the containers, and then thought better of it and grabbed a second one as well. The cubby grated shut with another tap.

            He turned around to find three sets of eyes on him in expectation. “Well, c’mon,” he said to Pavel, just barely managing to keep the _kid_ off the end of it without thinking too hard about why. “Thank you, Oma and Aru. We’ll be back in a little while, if that’s okay?”

            “Agree,” Aru said, turning a soft shade of purple. “Enjoy your scraping.”

            By the way Pavel hid his smile, Leonard assumed his _lord help me_ was evident in his expression, even if he didn’t say it aloud. Pavel popped up from his seat and headed for the exit, plucking the chemical device from his hands as they walked side by side. Leonard didn’t bother protesting, just let him have his way. Pavel had been a little cranky since this morning, and Leonard could guess why.

            “Do we have to go right back?” Pavel asked as the door ground open like an iris, peeling away to create an exit. “I think if I have to read one more report, I will fall asleep.”

            Or maybe he couldn’t guess why, he thought, surprised. He hadn’t thought Pavel could get bored as long as there was new information to absorb. “We don’t have to,” he said before thinking about it. They did technically have permission to wander wherever they wanted. “Where did you want to go?”

            Pavel shrugged. “Nowhere,” he admitted a little sheepishly. “I just do not want to sit anymore.”

            Leonard chuckled, but nodded. That was fair. “You can think of somewhere while we do this, then,” he suggested, belly giving another little dip at the prospect.

            They traveled the rest of the way to the restroom in silence, and Pavel opened the door for them. However the Telk eliminated waste, it could not have been that different from humans, as they still had objects resembling toilets in some sense. There were no dividers to separate the protrusions from one another, though there was a short one which separated the toilets from the running trough of water along the opposing wall.

            Leonard looked between the wall and the trough and Pavel, considering the best way to go about this that was least likely to result in anyone being injured. Pavel took the decision from him, taking him by the wrists and maneuvering him over to stand against the corner where the trough’s water disappeared into the wall. Leonard put his back to the wall and leaned against it as Pavel took the scalpels from his hands and put one of them on the short wall for later and the other on the edge of the trough.

            Wordlessly, Pavel dipped one hand into the water and then caught Leonard’s eye, waiting for Leonard to nod before he touched it to his face. Then he tapped a finger against the dispenser on the wall above the trough, and a viscous, blue liquid streamed to pool in his other palm. It was not soap, not like humans defined it anyway, but they had learned it did nearly the same thing. Leonard held very still as Pavel brought the liquid to his face and began to foam it over his jaw and down his neck.

            “Give me your hand, Leo,” Pavel said softly, and Leonard was not terribly surprised that he complied without wondering why. Pavel shifted Leonard’s hand to splay on his hip and held it there firmly. “If you want me to stop, you squeeze. Do you understand?”

            Leonard nodded instead of opening his mouth while the cleaner was so close to his lips. Pavel took that as permission, cleaned his hand, and plucked up the scalpel again. Unwilling to trust himself to stay still if he watched, Leonard closed his eyes and waited for first contact. It came a moment later, the blade feather light on the edge of his jaw, and at the exact right angle to take hair but not flesh.

            Pavel’s touches were sure and steady, warm in a way that turned each motion from merely perfunctory to something careful, almost reverent. Leonard’s belly still tightened every time Pavel tipped his chin or turned his head for access, but Pavel never wavered. The rasp of the scalpel filled the room as Pavel scraped over the delicate skin of his throat. Despite his earlier reservations, the cadence of the motion and sound quickly became soothing, and Leonard found himself falling into the rhythm of it.

            Toward the end, when Pavel’s movements slowed as he looked over his handiwork, Leonard slowly opened his eyes, feeling a little dazed. Pavel’s gaze flicked to his, blue eyes bright and even bluer in the lichen light, and he smiled. “Almost finished.”

            Leonard swallowed and tracked Pavel’s motions by where his gaze moved, watched him taking in the skin of Leonard’s cheek, the curve of his jaw, his exposed throat, and he found that he was not actually nervous anymore. Pavel had a blade sharp enough to cut without feeling it, and he trusted him to wield it against his skin. The realization made his skin tingle, his heartbeat fast in his fingertips against Pavel’s slender hip.

            “There,” Pavel breathed, running a damp thumb over Leonard’s jaw, fingers trailing down Leonard’s throat.

            “All finished?” Leonard ask, voice scratchy. It had all taken far less time than he had expected, or maybe he’d just gotten lost in it.

            “Yes, and you did not die even once,” Pavel assured him with a cheeky little grin as he turned to rinse the scalpel for the last time. “Perhaps yours are not the only steady hands in the galaxy?”

            Leonard watched the water run clean after Pavel dunked his hands into it, and then met his gaze when he looked up again. “You have very good hands,” Leonard told him sincerely. “I never doubted that.”

            “Only my ability to use them,” Pavel concluded, moving so that Leonard could rinse his face clean.

            “No,” Leonard said, leaning to splash the lukewarm water on his face, scrubbing off the cleaner to give himself a moment to answer. He tried not to think of exactly how good Pavel’s hands could be.

            “You are a terrible liar, Leonard,” Pavel said good-naturedly when he surfaced, and passed him a towel to wipe his face dry. “My turn?”

            Nodding, Leonard traded places with him, retrieving the second scalpel from the short wall and leaving the used one in its place. Pavel settled in against the corner wall beside the trough and tipped his chin up when Leonard reached for him with the cleaner on his hands.

            Unlike Leonard, he did not close his eyes as hands smoothed over his skin, or when Leonard first drew the blade’s edge over his skin. Instead, he watched, blue eyes tracking Leonard’s like he was waiting for some kind of sign. Pavel held himself perfectly still, even his breathing not moving his head or neck as Leonard smoothed the blade down his throat in steady strokes, so close to the lifelines pulsing beneath his skin.

            Pavel did not flinch or falter or put his hand on Leonard just in case he wanted to say stop, and Leonard wasn’t sure what to do with that kind of trust. He was used to it, in sick bay, when patients put their lives in his hands to be healed, but this was not sick bay and Pavel was not a patient. Shaving was not a skill Leonard had proven to anyone, but Pavel trusted him anyway, without reservation.

            Leonard was beginning to think that perhaps what he really needed was to _stop_ thinking and just do the same. He wanted Pavel, and if the last few days were any indication, Pavel wanted him to some degree as well. If he could only have him here, could only have him for a short while, even if it would be, as Pavel had said, _only sex_ , maybe that would be enough.

            However, he’d had enough experience in getting what he thought he wanted to know that it didn’t usually end well.

            “All done,” he rasped, removing the scalpel for the last time, his hand dragging gently down Pavel’s throat to rest against its hollow- just inches away from that sensitive spot where neck met shoulder.

            Maybe this time would be different. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t.

            He reluctantly pulled his hand away.

            “Thank you,” Pavel said softly. He did not move yet, intense gaze still on Leonard, throat still bared to leave the evidence of Leonard’s handiwork on display.

            Leonard stared back for a long moment, torn between putting his hand back to push Pavel up against the wall and kiss him senseless, and taking a step back to put distance between them again. “We should get going,” he said instead of choosing.

            “If that is what you want,” Pavel said, pushing away from the wall and into Leonard’s personal space. Leonard’s breath caught in anticipation, but Pavel only turned to the running water to clean his face.

            Leonard took a step back to give him space, or maybe just to get some for himself to calm the pounding of his heart.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeeee well, I ended up splitting this chapter in two to get something out to you a little faster and because this seemed like a good place to stop.


	11. The Desired Supplies

 

 

After trying to decide where else they could possibly go, they had returned to the medical labs anyway. McCoy had cited that he had work to do still, and Pavel had not wanted to go to any of the communal places alone. Thankfully, it appeared that Omaru had explained the reason for their absences. The medical staff had barely noticed their return and, after a brief, initial fascination over the humans’ change in appearance, went back to work with less fuss than Leonard had expected.

Omaru were conspicuously absent upon their return, and the noncommittal responses from the others amounted to zero help. Pavel had picked up the PADD he’d been reading from before they left and pointedly reminded McCoy there was work to be done, but he had pressed back when McCoy rested his calf against Pavel’s under the table. In a vain attempt to keep his thoughts from straying straight to Pavel – and everything he wanted to _do_ with Pavel that did not include sitting at tables with work between them – McCoy had tried to focus on the cell samples Omaru had left him from the reservoir chamber.

He somehow managed to focus enough that he didn’t realize they had company until Pavel kicked his foot. Ready to argue over the unnecessary assault, McCoy looked up and found himself the center of attention. Omaru stood at the end of their work bench with Filgop by their side, and it looked very much like they were waiting for an answer.

“What?” McCoy said, ignoring Pavel’s amused eye roll.

All four Telk fluttered with pink and purple before settling back into blue. “Filgop have invited Pavel to perform company, in their lab. Do you wish to go?” Oma asked.

McCoy looked to Pavel, whose eyes were just a little too wide as he shook his head to say he didn’t know why they were being asked to separate, either. Looking past the small group to the other Telk in the room, McCoy dropped his voice. “If he goes, don’t we both… have to?”

Gop turned a brilliant shade of pink and laughed, the same silly noise that Aru made. “We heard humans bond by being apart and coming back,” they said conspiratorially. “We wish to help your bond.”

“Oh,” McCoy said, relaxing a little. He glanced to Pavel, who seemed to feel better as well, and then gave a little shrug. “I’m… good here, if you want to go.”

Pavel considered the idea, and then hopped up from his seat. “Yes,” he said decisively. “I would like this. I can see more of your _many technologies_.”

Fil colored a pretty shade of purple and Gop laughed again, shattering into a similar color a moment later. Pavel stepped around the end of the table to join them, but they made no move to leave, just staring happily between the two humans. McCoy shrugged when Pavel looked to him for help. The Telk were obviously waiting for something, but he had no idea what that might be.

“Well… have fun,” he said, hoping it would move them on their way. It did not, but it did cause jagged spikes of yellow across Gop’s skin.

“We cannot go,” Gop told them seriously, looking quickly between them. “You have not said goodbye. Humans kiss to say goodbye, agree?”

Pavel’s eyes lit with amusement, most likely at how they’d shot themselves in the foot with that particular explanation. “We did say that,” he agreed, though his eyes were locked on McCoy’s and he knew it was a discussion.

McCoy’s belly gave a little swoop of want at the thought of kissing Pavel again. “Yeah,” he said, motioning with one hand for Pavel to come over to him.

When he moved to get up to meet him, Pavel held up both hands, walking him back to sit and then he shuffled into the space between McCoy’s knees. “Relax,” he breathed, hands finding McCoy’s jaw to pull him gently forward.

The brush of Pavel’s lips was soft at first, hesitant, _asking_ , instead of demanding anything from him, and for a second McCoy thought he might leave it at that. As soon as he’d thought it, he knew he couldn’t, knew he didn’t want to. He let his fingers curl around Pavel’s hips, pulling him in closer, caged between McCoy’s thighs. Quick to adjust, Pavel dropped his arms to circle McCoy’s neck and a bolt of arousal shot down his spine when he felt the slide of Pavel’s tongue over the seal of his lips.

He pulled back, breath short, just enough to see how dark Pavel’s eyes were when they opened, close enough still to feel the brush of air from the small, needy whine Pavel gave. Right then, McCoy would have given anything to have him somewhere private, somewhere that he could get his hands on him for real and hang the consequences.

Instead, he pried his hands off with a little push, and said: “Off you get. I’ll see you when you come back.”

Pavel nodded, throat working, but if he had anything to say, he kept it to himself as he retreated. The rest of the world returned as McCoy caught sight of Gop, neon magenta, and Fil, a deep pink-purple. Heat flushed at McCoy’s cheeks and he turned back to face the table. The two Telk crowded around Pavel and whisked him away without another word, leaving McCoy alone with Omaru.

“Do you need anything?” Oma asked softly, a pale blue.

He needed a lot of things, McCoy thought, but nothing Oma could give. Nothing that the perspective he’d just gotten hadn’t already given him. He could almost believe that getting hurt again would be worth it, just to see that look in Pavel’s eyes one more time.

“No, but thank you,” McCoy answered, glancing up at where Filgop had taken Pavel away from him. Maybe the distance would do him some good, he thought, fingers still tingling with the desire to touch Pavel again.

Then again, maybe not.

 

* * *

 

McCoy glanced over at the two Telk hunkered down at the end of his work space, their colors slowly shifting between yellow and orange like some kind of strange decoration. They had come over a few minutes before, and McCoy had first thought they might be waiting for him to stop working in order to ask questions, but when he had paused, they just continued to watch him in silence. The rest of the room appeared to be minding their own business, but McCoy had glanced up and caught several of them looking in his direction in ways they probably thought were subtle.

“What is it?” he finally asked, more snappish than he’d intended.

Roon squeaked and flashed a color similar to the one they’d displayed the last time they and Qin had questioned him, the one McCoy didn’t recognize. “What is what?” they asked.

McCoy sighed. “I mean, what do you want? You’ve been standing there a good five minutes.”

The two Telk shared a look and a few shifts of colors, and then Qin turned back to him. “You are well?” they asked hesitantly.

“I’m fine,” McCoy assured them, setting down his PADD. He’d been trying to read about the properties of _linista_ , one of the mosses of this world. As he’d read the last sentence at least three times without taking anything from it, maybe it was time for a break anyway.

“For how many?” Qin asked, insistent.

“How many?” McCoy echoed, feeling an awful lot like he was heading right into another screaming fit with no Pavel around to rescue him.

Qin changed an uncertain shade of orange and then cleared hesitantly to a green-blue. “How many hours?”

“Until you need your mate back,” Roon clarified.

“More hours than we’ll be apart,” McCoy assured them both. “At home we are apart for at least eight hours. It’s only been two.”

“Ah,” Qin said, looking down and then back up to Roon. McCoy watched them change colors, and then they both resolved to a pleasant, solid blue. “We will perform time for you, then!”

This seemed to excite them and before McCoy could ask what performing time entailed, they were gone, wriggling across the room in a small flurry of colors and soft words in their native language. McCoy sighed again. It was going to be a long day.

 

* * *

 

They were back again, standing hunkered down at the end of the bench, this time with two of the others. If it weren’t for their shifting colors as they observed him, McCoy might have mistaken them for furniture with how still they were. When they stood like that, they almost looked like little, irregular pillars, smooth, hairless heads like domes, their loose, flowing clothing like decoration. McCoy ignored them for as long as he could, but he wasn’t very good at tolerating heavy silences. At least they had waited a few more hours before coming back.

“What now?” he asked, looking up and setting his PADD down again.

Qin shifted quickly to a solid purple. “LaiTer have a question.” They shuffled around to move the other two Telk forward so they could speak.

One of them hunkered down even more into theirself, and the other blushed a pretty shade of that orange and then yellow and then orange before speaking. “You are apart from Pavel, agree?”

“Agree,” McCoy said slowly, wondering where this was going. He did not want to back himself into a corner again.

Nervous yellow flashed through the group and the speaker collected their wits quickly and continued. “And… you are separated from your first mate.”

McCoy contained a groan, sure that he didn’t like where this was going. “I am.”

Another little maelstrom of color. “How is difference?”

McCoy’s heart skipped a beat at the question, thinking that they’d just been caught. He grasped for an explanation that wouldn’t force him to explain humans didn’t bond. Instead of saying the first thing to come to mind, he took his time, since they seemed more curious than afraid.

“Uh… Omaru said that your soft bonds sometimes switch their bonds, right?” he said slowly. “Agree?”

“Agree,” they all said quickly, turning purple.

“Okay, well, my ex- my first mate, she chose to switch her bond to someone else,” he explained.

“But you did not have someone else,” the hunkered down Telk said firmly, straightening up some.

McCoy’s heart twisted up at the reminder. No, he hadn’t had anyone else through the divorce, through the months afterward where he’d tried to keep the shambles of his life together and failed miserably. He hadn’t had anyone else when, at the end of his rope with nothing left, he’d finally filled out an application for the Academy. He hadn’t had anyone until he’d sat down on that shuttle next to Jim and started his life over again.

“Not immediately,” he said carefully. “I told you before, that humans can break bonds with their mates. It does damage us, if the bond is strong, but we are able to survive it if we have a community bond.”

This sent a dizzying whirl of colors and motion through the group, a soft, hurried discussion carried out among themselves before Qin spoke over them, calming them. “Like your ship,” they said. “A colony.”

“Kind of, yeah,” McCoy agreed with a nod of his head. “I didn’t have anyone right away, but I found my captain quickly, and we joined the ship’s crew. The ship’s, uh, colony,” he clarified. “And that’s where I found Pavel.”

The group turned pink at the conclusion of his story, touching and gibbering in their beautiful tones. “And you separate from Pavel for short times, so your bond may endure long times?” asked Roon when they settled.

“That’s part of it,” McCoy agreed, even though he’d never thought of it like that. “And, it’s nice to be reminded of what you have.”

All the Telk turned a curious shade of orange-green, which was quite the color. “If Pavel is away, how do you have him?”

McCoy smiled softly. “It’s not that he’s away,” he explained. “It’s when he comes back, you see? Humans call it missing each other. When you have someone, and they go away for a little while, you miss them. You want them to come back.”

“You want Pavel to come back?” Roon asked, the words sending the group into a bright shade of yellow and Qin immediately started to move away from the group.

“No!” McCoy said quickly, a little too loudly, and then course corrected when the group trilled in alarm. “I mean, yes, I do want him to come back, but he doesn’t _need_ to yet.”

The four Telk settled back in, tense and yellow but flashing with green as they processed. It was Qin who figured it out first. “He cannot return yet, because you want to miss him. Missing him makes your bond stronger.”

“Yes,” McCoy said, relieved that he had apparently averted a meltdown all on his own. “And I can’t miss him if he is with me all the time.”

“Strange,” Qin marveled while they changed to a pretty shade of blue-green, like the tropical oceans of Earth. “We will continue to perform time while you perform missing Pavel.”

McCoy opened his mouth to correct them, but closed it just as quickly and let them shuffle back to their seats in peace.

 

* * *

 

McCoy saw the four of them coming this time, mostly because he had given up trying to read from his PADD, too distracted wondering if Pavel was all right down in the tech lab with Filgop. He couldn’t stop worrying that Pavel would say the wrong thing, despite that his track record was better than McCoy’s in that department. Still, if he did, he was alone down there, unable to get any help. At best, he could probably make a run for it and find his way up here but if not-

“Leonard,” Qin said, a bright shade of yellow. “You are not well? You have performed too much missing Pavel?”

“What?” McCoy asked, realizing he had gotten lost in his worries again in the five seconds between seeing the Telk heading his way and their arrival at his table. “No, I- no, I’m fine.”

And he was fine, technically. There was nothing wrong outside of his baseless worries, but he assumed that they were altering his chemical scent somehow, so he tried to regain some kind of control. He reminded himself that since it was nearly dinnertime, he would see Pavel soon enough and be assured of his safety.

“You do not like being apart,” Roon guessed quietly, sounding almost sympathetic. “But Pavel is not your first mate. He will not end your bond.”

_Except that he would, he will_ , McCoy wanted to say, but wisely kept his mouth shut. The last thing he needed them finding out was how temporary this arrangement was destined to be. “I know,” he said instead. “It’s a… it’s a good bond, this time.”

Pink flashed into that unrecognized color and back to pink-purple across the group, though Qin’s color changed to the yellow-orange of concern. “McCoy, we have a question. Did breaking your last bond damage you?”

McCoy sighed, lips pursing, but it was an innocent enough question with a simple enough answer. “It did.”

A second new color chased away the yellow, to be quickly replaced by a soft, mint green and Qin moved forward to place their tentacled hand upon his forearm, warm and smooth. “You would have made good offsprings with Pavel.”

Containing a groan, McCoy decided not to correct them, on the off chance they would completely misunderstand his explanations. There were medical texts included with the trades the Federation would be making with the Telk over the next few years. They could read up on human reproduction some time when it wouldn’t result in a meltdown he couldn’t fix.

Qin patted his arm once more before withdrawing. “But, Pavel will make good offsprings alone, since you cannot perform.”

“Wait, _what_?” McCoy asked incredulously.

The four turned similar shades of alarm yellow. “You are damaged,” Qin said reasonably. “Agree?”

“Not like _that_ ,” McCoy said quickly, indignant enough to ignore his embarrassment over the incredibly personal inquiry.

Colors flurried in exclamation over their skins and Qin backed away to rejoin the others, turning the first unfamiliar color. “Apologies!” they said gently. “You say you are damaged, and you do not perform copulation with Pavel. We thought you could not.”

“He _can_ ,” came Pavel’s voice from a few yards away, and Leonard jumped. He had been staring so dumbstruck at the Telk he had not even noticed the door opening. “He just chooses _not_ to.”

Leonard started to scowl, but any annoyance he might have felt melted as soon as he caught sight of Pavel’s bright, happy eyes and warm grin. In his hands he grasped a small container that doubtless held technology he would be excited about all evening.

It was the exact same face Pavel had worn the first time he visited Leonard’s sickbay aboard the Enterprise. The face he’d made as he excitedly chattered at Leonard, apparently oblivious to the pain of having most of the nerves and tendons in his hand repaired with a manual regenerator, to preserve dexterity.

It was the same face Leonard had so gently fallen for years ago.

His belly gave a little dip at the reminder, and he stood to cross over to Pavel, skirting the group of Telk on the way. They all changed to brilliant pink at his passing. Pavel turned a little pink, as well, and Leonard smiled as he reached him, giving him no time to react as he pulled him into a kiss.

Pavel gave a tiny whimper, tugging the container from between them to hold it in one hand, his other curling into Leonard’s shirt to pull him closer. It felt good, felt _right_ , to have him back, to know he was fine and that nothing had gone wrong downstairs. If Leonard pressed a little more firmly into the kiss than he’d intended, he would blame it on his relief. Pavel did not seem to mind.

Leonard pulled away first, slow, touching his nose to Pavel’s indulgently as he did so. Pavel’s nose wrinkled briefly, but when he caught Leonard’s eyes, he smiled softly.

“He performed seven hours of missing you,” Qin reported dutifully from behind them, and Pavel’s smile grew as Leonard rolled his eyes. “Your bond is well?”

“Very well, I think,” Pavel assured them, eyes still on Leonard’s.

Leonard smiled back. “Very well,” he agreed gently.

 

* * *

 

Leonard watched Pavel close the door to their room, balancing his container in one hand. He hadn’t set it down yet, even when they had swung by the dining cavern to pick up food, and despite how curious he was, Leonard hadn’t yet asked what was inside. It seemed like some kind of surprise, so he was willing to wait.

Instead, he had asked about how Pavel’s day had gone and gotten an enthusiastic string of technical babble that he’d struggled to keep up with as they walked. His understanding of the technical jargon of transporter engineering was really secondary to how much Leonard found he enjoyed listening to Pavel ramble with such endearing enthusiasm.

What he did easily understand was that despite their vast underground shelter and seemingly simple lives, the Telk were obviously not a prewarp society- they wouldn’t be here if that had been the case. Pavel had learned that they had just chosen not to do much space travel, as it took them away from their communities for long stretches of time. They preferred to range only their own solar system, which consisted mostly of one other M-Class planet and four inhabited moons, all of which the Telk had friendly trade relations with but otherwise mostly ignored.

In fact, Pavel told him excitedly, Filgop were working on ways to ignore their neighbors even harder, by setting up interplanetary teleportation stations. Pavel was very excited about this, as most of the Federation technology could not reach nearly so far. They had been working on it, ever since the Narada incident, and they were close, but as it turned out, Filgop were probably closer.

“Just because they do not want to leave their home!” Pavel had exclaimed, marveling and shaking his head. “Well. Most of them.”

“Most of them?” Leonard had asked.

“Mmm… yes,” Pavel said thoughtfully. “I explained to Gop that I joined Starfleet to learn to map the stars, and to travel among them. I think they would like to do the same.”

It turned out, Pavel had explained, that Gop had shown him designs for a space probe they wanted to build and launch someday, one that they had shelved after First Contact with the Federation. When the Federation expressed that admission to Starfleet for any of the Telk would be several years off after a lot of paperwork, Gop had started to redesign the probe to communicate with Federation technology.

“They’ve just got the one?” Leonard had asked.

“They only need one, if they can get it to work,” Pavel explained, accent thickening the more excited he got. “It would be capable of breaking the warp barrier, and going everywhere at once! It could observe our entire universe in an instant! Imagine if it could safely take a passenger! Of course,” Pavel had clarified, sobering considerably but still breathless and glowing from his enthusiasm, “it is still a work in progress with a long way to go, but it is very fascinating work. I would like to learn more about it before we leave.”

It had been nice, pleasant really, to see Pavel get so worked up over anything work related. If he were honest with himself, Leonard had started to feel a little guilty that Pavel had been stuck in the medical labs reading translations about a science that was not his own. Leonard could enjoy an article or two in fields unrelated to medicine, but he figured after the tenth or twentieth or hundredth page of information, even someone like Pavel might get bored reading about something outside his interests. He was glad the other man had gotten such an invigorating break.

Now, though, Pavel was quiet, watching Leonard set their dinner tray down on the table, his mystery container clutched in both hands. He set it down on the end of the bed, rather than the table, and although Leonard’s brow rose, he still kept his peace. Whatever it was, Pavel had not found it necessary to explain, and just in case it was a personal gift, Leonard wasn’t going to pry.

So he just sat down and began picking through the food they had grabbed. There were more of the blue rolls and two small containers with some kind of stew and large chunks of indiscernible food in them. He plucked out one of the desserts first, a mound of pinkish jelly about as big around as his palm and roughly as thick. He’d had one of these at breakfast, and enjoyed it thoroughly despite that it had a unique rather than adaptive flavor. Oma had told him it was a plant they cultivated in the hydroponics labs in a different sector of the colony.

Across from him, Pavel plucked up one of the ramekins of soup and set about his own dinner. He ate a little like he hadn’t been fed, and Leonard wouldn’t have been surprised to hear if they’d plain forgotten after getting wrapped up in their work. He smiled a little as he finished off his jelly.

“Were your friends as nosy as mine, today?” he asked after a few more minutes, pulling apart a bit of one of his rolls to dip into the soup. It tasted a lot like beef stew tonight.

Pavel glanced up and swallowed quickly. “Nosier, maybe,” he said, ducking his head a little. “Did they ask you questions about me all day?”

“Some of them were about you,” Leonard admitted. “Most of them were about me, or about us. I thought for sure I’d set them all screaming again.”

Grinning, Pavel nodded along. “Filgop do not seem easily startled,” Pavel told him. “You would think that made it easier to talk, but if they were not talking about technology, they were asking questions about us, too. You know, they asked me the same thing…”

“What same thing?” Leonard said, but he already knew- Pavel had only heard one of the questions he’d been asked.

“If you are _capable_ , why we have not had sex,” he said clearly, obviously exasperated he had to say it at all. “Well, they did not say it so plainly.”

Leonard swallowed, throat dry. “What’d you tell them?”

“What could I tell them?” Pavel asked, sounding a little put out now. “There was no one to rescue me. I could not tell them you are trying to decide if you want me.”

Leonard’s heart twisted painfully at the plainness of the statement, at how unclear Leonard must have been for Pavel to believe Leonard hesitated because he didn’t want him. He was not sure what he could say that would not reveal just how embarrassingly _much_ he wanted Pavel, all of him, but he had to say something, _anything_ , to chase that bitter note from Pavel’s tone.

“Pavel…“ he started, hoping an appropriate reassurance would come to him now that he’d opened his mouth.

“So, I told them we do not have the right supplies here,” Pavel interrupted, before he could get another word out. Pink flushed at the tips of his ears and over his cheekbones at the declaration.

“You… you what?” Leonard asked, eyes widening at the implication, whatever else he had meant to say evaporating from his mind. He could only imagine how _that_ part of the conversation had gone.

Pavel gestured broadly at the bed, where his mystery package sat so innocently. “They gave us supplies,” he said vaguely, a little more amused now.

Leonard nearly choked on his own tongue when he realized what must be inside of the package Pavel had been carrying all evening, and why he had not volunteered to explain. “Oh,” he said, sounding strangled even to his own ears and knowing his own blush must rival Pavel’s at the moment. “That’s…”

“Yes,” Pavel agreed, and then turned in his chair and clambered to his feet, finished with his food. “Do you mind if I bathe first?”

Brain still click-whirring over his revelation, McCoy nodded somewhat numbly, eyes still on the container on the bed. When Pavel’s shirt landed beside it, Leonard’s eyes ticked up to see him standing at the edge of the half wall. Leonard’s breath went soft as he followed Pavel’s thumbs hooking into the edges of the lower garment to pull it down and off. He just caught a glimpse of bare hip before he realized he was staring and snapped his attention down to the remains of their dinner.

He had to know. He _had_ to know that Leonard could see him from here. He could have stepped behind the wall, like he’d done every other night so far, like he was now doing judging by Leonard’s peripheral vision. That had been deliberate, a _show_.

Leonard shivered, skin tingling with the knowledge.

He let out a steadying breath and picked up Pavel’s discarded bowl, putting it gently back onto the tray, and then his own, letting the clean up calm him.

Supplies.

He glanced over at the package, its mere presence a screaming cacophony over the soft sound of running water.

He could not help but wonder what the Telk considered _supplies_ , and whether or not Pavel had tried to explain any further. Given his current mood, Leonard doubted it, but… he swallowed hard, unable to look away from the innocuous little container.

Whatever was inside probably mattered less than the idea that Pavel had thought about needing it, and _that_ sent a dizzying swirl of arousal through Leonard.

Dragging his gaze away from the box, he looked to the bathing area, and Pavel was out of sight now. He wouldn’t be able to see if Leonard looked to see what exactly was inside, for curiosity’s sake. As soon as he’d thought it, Leonard found himself consumed with the need to know for sure.

He slipped away from the table and onto the edge of the bed, leaning to pull off the top of the box. He didn’t want to move the box, sure that Pavel would notice if he did, and luckily it was not sealed. It came open without a noise. He shot one last glance toward the bath before peering in over the side.

There were six glass vials, each a different color and shape, with a soft, green stopper keeping them each closed. He picked up one of them and a dark, cherry-red liquid swirled sluggishly inside of it, coating the sides. Definitely some kind of oil. With his other hand, he pulled out another vial, this one an almost opaque green and it didn’t move until he actually tipped the vial on its side. Even then it only crawled, viscous like a gel.

There were two more oils, one more lotion, and one vial of tightly packed round baubles that reminded Leonard of the bulbs of vaccines they’d used the first day. The labels on the sides were written in the delicate Telk script with no translation, which was not terribly helpful for determining if any of it would even be safe for humans to use in any capacity. Maybe Pavel had gotten a verbal explanation, and the thought sent a little shiver down Leonard’s spine.

He pulled the stopper off the clear vial of oil and a pleasant scent bloomed, very much like opening a bottle of essential oil. It reminded Leonard a little of vanilla and a little of lemon and a little of deep water, and though it should have been a disconcerting combination, he actually found he enjoyed it.

Plugging the stopper back in place, Leonard set the vial back where he’d gotten it from and reached for another, curious if they would all smell the same or not.

“Couldn’t resist?” came Pavel’s voice from across the room.

Jumping, Leonard nearly dropped the oil he’d selected, and he only just barely kept from frantically shoving the vial back into place guiltily. His eyes flicked up, fingers tight on the vial, to find Pavel leaning on his elbows over the half wall, watching him intently. His curls lay matted to his forehead from the water, skin still glistening. Pavel smiled, tipping his head a little as he flicked his gaze down to the vials and back up in question.

“Find anything you like?” Pavel asked, voice a low purr that absolutely did things to Leonard, set heat pooling low in his belly.

“I don’t even know what they are,” he replied, carefully setting the vial down again, though he didn’t reach for the top.

“Oils,” Pavel said simply, like it should be obvious. “For… you know.”

Leonard drew a shaky breath and dropped his gaze back down to the box. That wasn’t really what he’d been asking. He knew that much. “Yeah, I… Look, Pavel-”

“Massage oils, Leonard,” Pavel said, drawling his full name in an amused tone, and Leonard’s attention snapped up again. He was grinning, on the edge of laughter. “They are just massage oils. You can stop making that worried face now.”

“I wasn’t- oh, whatever,” Leonard groused, trailing off as Pavel came around the side of the wall, towel slung low on his hips. He didn’t move as Pavel took a seat on the edge of the bed.

“That was not very nice of me,” he said gently, plucking the vial of red oil from within the uncovered box. “Will you allow me to apologize?”

Leonard watched Pavel’s fingers as he rolled the vial in his palm, and shifted against his body’s reaction to the motion. “You don’t need to apologize,” he rasped, hauling his attention up to Pavel’s eyes.

“I want to,” Pavel said, more seriously this time. “It would be a shame to let such a gift go to waste, after all. Gop would be disappointed.”

“Just Gop?” Leonard breathed, thrilling when he saw Pavel’s pupils widen fractionally at his words.

“No,” Pavel admitted, though he didn’t elaborate. He presented the vial, resting on the flat of his palm. “May I do this?”

Leonard could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, blood singing at the thought of letting Pavel get his hands on him. He wanted that. He wanted that so much it ached, sparked at his joints, arced down his spine, pleasantly electric. “Okay,” he agreed.

Pavel frowned a little. “Yes or no, Leo. Be clear,” he chided without heat, using Leonard’s own request the night before against him.

“Yes,” Leonard said instantly, not at all ashamed at how close he sounded to begging. He would. At this point, he would, without thinking twice about it, if that was what Pavel wanted.

“Then lie down,” Pavel instructed quietly, and Leonard could barely breathe as he watched Pavel move the box out of the way.

Leonard adjusted to start to lie down, and then thought better of it when he saw Pavel’s judgmental eyebrow. “Right,” he mumbled, and pulled the loose Telk shirt over his head, discarding it over the edge of the bed to collect later. Then he stretched out on top of the covers, nerves prickling in a mixture of excitement and worry.

One soft, dry hand smoothed over the bare skin of his back, unnecessary but welcome, and Leonard’s breath caught. He closed his eyes as it disappeared, and listened to Pavel set the box down on the floor. The bed shifted as Pavel rose, and then dipped as he knelt upon it again, walking on his knees across the short distance between them. Leonard stopped breathing entirely when Pavel slung a leg over him, settling his weight onto the backs of Leonard’s thighs.

“Is this okay?” Pavel asked, the roughness in his voice scraping over Leonard’s senses. “It is easier to reach.”

“Yeah,” Leonard breathed out and then remembered what Pavel had said. “Yes.”

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Pavel unstoppered one of the vials with a little pop. His weight shifted, pressing him closer, and Leonard had to swallow a moan. The first few drops of oil were neither hot nor cold, just a slick sensation on his skin a few seconds before Pavel’s palms smoothed up the line of his spine. Heat seared in their wake, pleasant and so intense Leonard was helpless to contain a loud groan of appreciation.

Pavel stilled, arched over him for a second, breathing so steady that Leonard knew he was close to losing control of it. His own breath shuddered out of him at the thought, his hips twitching involuntarily down into the bed. He wanted that. He wanted Pavel to lose a little control, wanted to hear when it happened, to be the cause of it… wanted to be on the receiving end of the consequences.

The thought burned through his veins, heady and frightening and right, and he knew then that from this moment on, it no longer mattered what happened after this place.  He knew with absolute certainty that he would make this mistake with his head up and his eyes clear and when it killed him later, he would only remember it was worth it. When Pavel asked – and Leonard was sure he would, now – he knew he would give in, give him anything, take everything he could get while they were here together.

He just needed Pavel to ask, just once

Instead, Pavel seemed to pull himself together and then dragged his palms firmly back down Leonard’s spine, hips shifting forward against Leonard’s for leverage. The shift pressed his hardening cock against the crease of Leonard’s ass. Desire shot through him again, harder, but Pavel made no move to do anything except exactly what he said he would, hands beginning to move more steadily over Leonard’s skin, soft and sure.

“Любимый мой, _relax_ ,” Pavel murmured, nimble fingers finding a knot under Leonard’s shoulder and working it loose with gentle pressure. “I won’t hurt you.”

Leonard’s heart twisted up at the words, and he let his heavy eyelids slip closed, willing himself to follow the soft order and relax. To wait. He focused on the dig of Pavel’s thumb close to his spine, and the easy swipe of his splayed hand to soothe the pressure. Silently, he named each muscle Pavel found, and let the tension leech from them, pulled from him by Pavel’s touch.

Bit by bit, Leonard’s breathing slowed and evened out. It felt good, _he_ felt good, warm and buzzing and pliant under Pavel’s careful ministrations. The dark behind his eyelids was muzzy and comforting and heavy. This was what he wanted- Pavel’s hands on his bare skin, Pavel’s weight keeping him in place, Pavel’s voice a soft murmur in the otherwise silent bedroom.

He struggled toward consciousness for a second, a token resistance to the sleep creeping in around the edges, sure that he needed to say something, but words just sieved through his mind. Pavel’s hands pet down his flanks, one on each side of him, pulling a contented sigh from Leonard instead.

Pavel’s weight shifted forward and Leonard had the fuzzy impression of warm lips brushing his shoulder blade. “Beautiful,” came the whisper against his skin, so quiet he might have imagined it entirely if not for the tickle of breath that accompanied it.

After that, only darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh you're all making it easy to stay motivated on this one with your lovely comments <3 We're so close now!!


	12. The Breaking Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed I added a co-author on this, and that is because the LOVELY BirdyMarie has sat her ass down and joined me to write the sex parts, as it's not particularly my thing. So you can thank her for this chapter's opening.
> 
> That being announced, I feel I should also point out that a large part of this chapter is sex, and if you want to skip it, you can control + F and search for "dragging his gaze up" and start from there for the stuff that matters.

 

 

            The soft shift of Pavel’s body roused him the next morning, the bare skin of Leonard’s chest left cold when Pavel rolled away. Still mostly asleep, Leonard chased after the warmth, fitting them back together once more, front to back the way they’d woken for days, and nuzzled his nose back into soft curls. At the wordless claim, Pavel made a soft noise, barely a breath, just frustration and need in equal measure. The helpless sound did nothing to clear Leonard’s head, even as the shift of Pavel’s ass into his groin jolted him into wakefulness.

            “Jesus, kid,” fell out of his dry mouth before he could stop it, lips beside Pavel’s ear, arm pressing Pavel’s wiry trunk firmer into the mattress like that would stop him. “You gotta…” Pavel pushed back with a different kind of noise, the kind that shot right through Leonard and left him breathless. “Sorry,” he said immediately, loosening his hold a little. He did not sound sorry, even to his own ears, not enough blood getting to his better senses to sound anything but desperate.

            Leonard was already hard, already having a difficult time controlling himself with the way two heartbeats pounded against his ribcage. To keep Pavel from making it worse, Leonard smoothed his free hand over Pavel’s hip to hold him steady, fingers pinning the knot of the towel still tied at Pavel’s waist. He could barely think past the arch of Pavel’s neck filling his view, or the heated skin of their thighs pressed flush where the Telk skirt had fallen aside.

            Pavel flexed against his grip, ground back against him, tensing when Leonard gripped harder.

            “Sorry,” Leonard rasped again, throat thick with sleep and arousal as he loosened his grip a second time. He didn’t let go, though, couldn’t seem to make himself release Pavel’s hip completely. “I’m sorry, Pavel.”

            Pavel twitched and swallowed a needy sound at the use of his name, barely giving voice to his next trembling words. “There is no line. You can…”

            The breathless admission made Leonard feel as though he would vibrate right out of his skin if something didn’t give. They stayed like that so long, Pavel started talking again, thready and pleading.

            “Leo, we should,” he breathed, and Leonard had never cursed the sound of his own name more for being said with such a mixture of reason and desire. “We should just do this.”

            “Pavel…” he started. Despite last night’s weakening of resolve, he knew it couldn’t be right, couldn’t be reasonable to do this under their circumstances... but then, reasonable had taken a two week vacation on the deck of the Enterprise and left them here to fend for themselves. All they had left was this.

            “The Telk would worry less, we would be safer,” Pavel said, echoing Leonard’s thoughts. He twisted his fingers in the sheet, holding tight. “Leonard… can we…”

            And that was too much for Leonard; he was helpless against how much he wanted this, even just once, even just for a moment. Pavel was asking, the way Leonard had been too scared to the night before when those nimble fingers worked him to rest, and Leonard did not have it in him to say no.

            He brushed his open mouth over Pavel’s ear again, earning another thready whine and a stuttering motion against his bruising grip. “Yes,” he whispered, remembering Pavel’s direction to be clear.

            Pavel squirmed under his fingers, the towel still clutched in Leonard’s hand coming loose with the motion, and then there was no more time to think, both of them beyond words. Pavel’s hand was on Leonard’s, tugging it gently but insistently toward him, fingers curled over Leonard’s curled over his hard cock and by God, if Leonard thought he could not stop before, he knew it was a lost cause when Pavel’s gasp sunk down into a low groan of appreciation.

            It would not take much, Leonard guessed, hating the thought. He wished they could draw this out, wondered what other pretty noises he could tease from Pavel with the permission to make this last, to keep him on edge all day. But if Pavel asked about it later, Leonard knew he would have no explanation for slowing this down the way he so badly wanted to do.

            Especially since Pavel was already so worked up, thrusting up into their tangled fingers and then back against Leonard’s own hardness. Acknowledging to himself it was equal parts selfishly indulgent and necessary, Leonard released Pavel momentarily to bring his palm to his own mouth. He ignored Pavel’s indignant whine at the loss of contact, grinning when Pavel turned and gasped to see Leonard licking his hand from heel to fingertip.

            “Len, please,” Pavel pleaded, flexing back against him.

            Acquiescing, Leonard put his _steadiest hands in the galaxy_ to good use, grasping Pavel’s cock again with a slick, sure grip, working him fast and easy. For a split second he considered running his mouth over that spot on Pavel’s neck – it was right there, within easy reach – but begging for relief was not the same as inviting a lover’s kiss. Instead, he pressed his nose against the base of Pavel’s skull to steady himself, not sure which of them was breathing harder.

            Soon enough, Pavel’s panting hitched and turned into a shuddering whimper. His entire body tensed, pressed heel to head against Leonard, and he spilled over their tangled hands. His other hand wrapped around Leonard’s wrist to stop him, to keep him close. Leonard stayed where he was put, letting Pavel ride out his orgasm uninterrupted until his breathing slowed and his heart wasn’t racing against Leonard’s sternum anymore.

            When Leonard moved give him space, to pull away, his own body still singing with arousal, Pavel made a noise of protest. He rolled quickly to face Leonard, slinging a leg over his legs to keep him there, and then leveraged himself to sit, still trembling as he straddled Leonard’s thighs. Their eyes met, and Pavel’s were bright and clear.

            “The Telk will know,” Pavel said softly, countering Leonard’s unspoken argument. “If it is only me, they will know. Let me fix that... please.”

            With the pleasant weight of Pavel sitting over him, flushed and shameless and beautiful, Leonard could not find the words to say they wouldn’t, or that Pavel didn’t have to help him fix anything. When Pavel’s hands hovered over where Leonard wanted them, needed them, Leonard couldn’t even remember why arguing mattered. He wanted this, and Pavel was practically begging.

            So what came out when he opened his mouth was a breathless, “Yes. Please.”

            With no hesitation at all, Pavel reached for the waistband of the Telk clothing with shaking fingers. Even with the other man practically sitting on them, Leonard lifted his hips to get out of enough clothing for Pavel to close his hand around him.

            Leonard’s head fell back with a groan, hands fisting uselessly against the bed as Pavel worked him with slow, even strokes. It felt good to be touched gently, to be touched at all, and he allowed himself a moment to get lost in it while the consequences were still light years away.

            Pavel paused to reach behind him for one of the vials of oil – the clear one this time – and when he returned, his slicked grip was quickly sure and steady. Something within Leonard relaxed at the reassurance that Pavel wasn’t new at touching another; he did not think he could forgive himself if this was a first. If Leonard had any other worries, they were lost in the swirl of Pavel’s palm over the head of his cock, his clever fingers fluttering along the underside before tightening just right again.

            As fast as it was now getting ready to pass, Leonard clung to the moment, not wanting to give up any part of it. But Pavel had other plans, leaning down over him, the palm not on his dick sliding up Leonard’s arching torso to steady himself. Leonard was so close already, ribs heaving and heartbeat thundering under those long fingers, that he couldn’t help himself.

            When Pavel murmured softly, “Let go, Leonard,” his hand fisted in their blanket as he came hard, harder than he had in a long time. Leonard’s other hand hovered near Pavel’s but did not touch as Pavel gentled his movements and just let Leonard breathe.

            He felt Pavel tracing his fingers through the mess on his stomach a moment later, and Leonard opened his eyes. Muzzily, he wondered when he had closed them. Dragging his gaze up, he found Pavel watching him softly, thoughtfully, like a complex star chart he just couldn’t make sense of.

             “I think they will leave us be, today,” was all Pavel said before climbing off of him, wiping his coated fingers off on the towel before slipping from the bed.          

            Leonard blinked after him for a moment, still trying to hop on any train of thought. But Pavel was moving away from him, and the only thought he could hold was that he didn’t want that to happen, and so he rolled after him, following him to the bath on still-shaky legs. Even if Leonard would have still been in the room, he didn’t want Pavel to be alone, to think that what had just happened was all Leonard wanted from him.

            Pavel turned a lazy, questioning smile to him as Leonard set his hip against the wall without getting any closer. Leonard still remembered the line Pavel had drawn at bathing together, and he intended to honor it despite the liberties he had taken only minutes ago. Pavel didn’t argue, obviously remembering as well, and passed him one of the small wash towels. He accepted it gratefully, mopping up the worst of their mess but not more, not wanting to ruin the whole point of having done it.

            He watched, as surreptitiously as he could, as Pavel cleaned himself as well. He hadn’t plugged the tub, only letting the warm water flow freely to rinse off their cloths when they were finished. He was curiously silent, that same contemplative look on his face, his brows a little scrunched as he wrung out the cloth and hung it on the edge of the tub to dry.

            Leonard cleared his throat, knowing that _something_ had to be said. “Are you, um… are you okay?”

            Pavel heaved an exasperated sigh and turned a patient smile on him. “Do I not look okay?” he asked, obviously aware he looked amazing, with the flush still receding from his neck and shoulders and the ghost impressions of Leonard’s hand now red on his hips. Leonard was pretty sure even those wouldn’t actually bruise. “You haven’t hurt me.”

            “You know that’s not what I meant,” Leonard chided, unwilling to let Pavel brush off the question like that, and Pavel had the good grace to only roll his eyes a little.

            “I am _fine_ ,” Pavel said sincerely. “Good, even. You wanted to protect me before, and now you have- we will be safer among the Telk today. How else should I feel but good?”

            Guilt twisted in Leonard’s gut, and he dropped his gaze to the smooth floor. “Right, yeah,” he said, leaning over to rinse his own cloth under the running water. “Sorry.”

            Pavel abruptly shut off the water as soon as the word was out of Leonard’s mouth, and Leonard looked up, a little startled at the harsh motion. Pavel stared at him, brow creased and lips pressed into a thin line, and Leonard could not guess what he’d done wrong until Pavel spoke.

            “Stop _saying_ that,” Pavel said firmly, not quite angry but not quite _not_ angry either. “You asked me to draw lines for you, and I did. I asked you to touch me, and you did. Now you say you are sorry, and what am I supposed to think? Did you not want to touch me? Did you not want me to touch you? This word is-”

            “Pavel!” Leonard interrupted almost sharply, dropping his soaking wet wash cloth into the tub in his haste to offer reassurance. He just barely kept himself from apologizing again, not wanting to set Pavel off again, reaching instead for Pavel’s shaking shoulders, tugging him over in silence. “Hey, come on now, it’s okay…” Leonard met no resistance at all when he touched their foreheads together, fingers curving at Pavel’s jaw and thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. “That’s not what I meant.”

            Reaching up, Pavel curled his fingers around Leonard’s wrists and leaned into him a little more, but said nothing for a long, tense moment. Leonard could hear him still breathing a little too fast. Finally he sighed, dropping his gaze. “What did you mean, then?”

            Leonard let out a heavy breath. He knew what he should say, what needed to be said, he just didn’t know if he had it in him to cross that line- and there _was_ a line between doing what they had done as friends and wanting _more_. “All right, listen…” he said slowly, trying his best to sound reasonable. “Yesterday, you told Qin I chose not to do… what we did, and you said you told Gop you were waiting for me to decide if I wanted you. But Pav- _Pashenka_ ,” he corrected, hoping it communicated what he didn’t have words for, “it’s not like that.”

            Pavel looked up, met his eyes, searching them for something. “What _is_ it like?” he murmured, fingers tightening a little on Leonard’s wrists.

            If he told Pavel how he felt, that he wanted to take this home with them, he risked screwing up whatever tenuous contract they’d managed to forge so far. On the other hand, there was a chance, however slim, that Pavel would return his feelings- a chance that they could go home and have it _work_. Despite that hope, the fear that it would not, that they would crash and burn right here if he said something, had his heart crawling into his throat to stop him.

            “It’s not… it’s not a question of whether or not I want you,” he forced himself to admit past the tightness in his chest, swallowing down his fears. Pavel deserved to know the truth. “It’s just that… I’m afraid this will turn into a mess for us, when we get home.”

            Pavel let out a harsh breath, then, almost a snort. “It will not,” Pavel assured him, pulling his face from Leonard’s hands. “When we are home, we will be out of danger, so everything can return to normal. I am capable of enjoying myself here with you, without causing a _mess_ when we leave. I think you are as well.”

            Leonard tamped down on the sharp pain at the firm rejection. “Yeah,” he agreed, because he didn’t want to but he _was_ capable; he had known he was even last night, when he recognized there was no going back for him. He would have this with Pavel for as long as he could, for most of a month, and when they went home… well. He forced a smile he knew probably didn’t light his eyes. “Of course. If you’re okay with that, I’m okay with that.”

            For just a moment longer, Pavel studied his face, his brow a little scrunched. “Are you okay with it for _you_?” he asked gently.

            Leonard couldn’t help the little flinch he gave at that. Trust Pavel to see right through him, to ask if Leonard was okay despite having gotten caught on his own feelings for Pavel. “Yeah,” he said, and at Pavel’s look, rolled his eyes. “Yes, Pavel. I’m fine.”

            It was close enough to the truth that Leonard didn’t feel too much guilt about it. _Fine_ , as Spock always reminded him, had variable definitions, after all.

            Nodding once, as if he had made some kind of decision, Pavel said softly: “Good.” He turned and reached for Leonard’s discarded cloth, wringing it out swiftly and placing it beside his own on the edge of the tub to dry. Then he moved away, fingers brushing Leonard’s shoulder as he passed, heading to get dressed for the day.

            Leonard stayed put a moment longer. He took a deep breath, trying to make space for the ache that settled under his breastbone, where his heart should have been. It didn’t work- everything felt too tight and too empty at the same time.

            Turning, he watched Pavel pull a clean shirt on over his head and arrange the loose fabric until it fit. Pavel caught him almost immediately, and quirked a smile that didn’t really light his eyes the way it had the night before. “Are you going to stay naked all day, Leo?” he teased gently, raking his gaze down Leonard’s profile.

            He told himself it didn’t hurt for Pavel to treat this situation lightly, and shoved away from the half wall with a scowl he clearly didn’t mean. This was, after all, exactly what Pavel had agreed to from the start, and nothing more. This was, regardless of how much more he felt, what _Leonard_ had agreed to from the start as well.

            He had no one to blame but himself for the ache in his chest. At least he still had a lot of time to get used to it, before they would have to go home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY OK  
> I'd say blame Leonard for this, but he's got blaming himself pretty well covered...


	13. Curses and Caveats

 

 

 

            _I’m afraid this will turn into a mess for us, when we get home._

            Pavel snorted softly, fresh hurt welling up as he pressed on that particular bruise. He would not have caused a problem, _still_ would not cause a problem once they returned to the ship. Although he was not Mr. Spock when it came to controlling his emotions, he liked to think he had enough of a handle on his actions that his professional relationship with Leonard would not suffer unduly.

            _It’s not a question of whether or not I want you_.

            Though it had smarted to hear aloud, Pavel had known that already. All of this was, from the start, a question of necessity, not desire. It was supposed to be a question of what they had to do to keep themselves safe, what they had to do to keep alive until the Enterprise could fetch them home. In this, Pavel knew that they would do whatever they had to do, the same way any of the crew would do in a dangerous situation.

            In the same breath, he knew what they had done this morning was in no way unavoidable. The Telk had so far been concerned about them, loud at times, but hardly violent, and Omaru had even gone so far as to offer their aid in protecting the two humans. As long as they kept their heads down as they had been doing the past few days, they could have gotten through the next few days just fine. They could have remained as they were, friends supporting one another in a tough situation.

            The problem was that Pavel did not want to be _friends_ , or at least not _just_ friends. Once they made it back to the ship, he knew things would go back to how they had been the last couple of years. He would see Leonard in sickbay if he was injured or ill, and on the bridge when Leonard inevitably made his way there to keep an eye on the captain. He might end up on away missions with Leonard again, and maybe their current away mission would sit between them then, nervy and aching, and maybe it would not.

            And he did not _want_ that. He wanted _more_. He wanted Leonard to want more, to want _him_ , to want to make a little bit of a mess figuring out how they could be together after this place released them. He wanted Leonard to want to touch him without the excuse of duress, with no threat to their safety for either of them to hide behind.

            He wanted-

            “Pavel,” said a voice nearby, soft and pitched in a way that told Pavel it was not the first time he had been called. He looked up to find both Fil and Gop looking at him. “Do you need to return to Leonard?”

            “No,” Pavel said hotly, not bothering to try to sound less defensive.

            “You are distressed,” Fil said, their colors a pale blue shattering with yellow.

            “I am not,” Pavel argued, even though he was. He sighed and pulled himself together. “I have a lot of things to think about today,” he added, hoping it would make up for the blatant lie.

            “Apparently, what you are doing is not one of them,” Fil commented, eyes flicking down to the components in Pavel’s hands. Pavel had been fiddling with them for the last half hour and gotten absolutely nowhere. He could not even remember what they belonged to, now.

            Pavel felt his cheeks heat a little in embarrassment, and he set them down on the table. “Sorry,” he apologized, and there was another bruise to press, the sound of Leonard’s apologies this morning echoing in his mind. It seemed like they would not have to wait to get back to the Enterprise for things to become a mess.

            “Are all humans this distracted after copulation?” Gop asked as they collected the parts and moved to put them away. “It does not seem very efficient.”

            “It is not,” Pavel agreed with a sigh. “Usually, I think humans are distracted because they are happy.”

            “You are not happy?” Fil asked softly, leaning on the table between them.

            Pavel licked his lips, ready to say no, but the word stuck in his throat. Parts of him were happy- the part that thrilled whenever Leonard pressed back into his touches, and the part that held onto the memory of every single kiss, and the part that would never forget the look on Leonard’s face when he had finally closed his eyes in surrender to Pavel’s clever hands. The part of him that cherished the sound of _Pashenka_ on Leonard’s lips. The part of him that was grateful for every opportunity he had been given to see the softer side of Leonard, and to hear him call Pavel _friend_.

            Maybe that was enough.

            He smiled a little, and found himself surprised he did not have to force it. “I am happy,” Pavel answered finally, looking up to meet Fil’s eyes. “But with Leonard, nothing is ever easy. That is all.”

            “We can help you again?” Gop offered hopefully.

            “You have been very helpful,” Pavel assured them quickly, both hands up to arrest any attempts. He was still not sure how he was going to explain returning to the Enterprise with a bunch of oils, or with what literally amounted to very strong aphrodisiacs he was not sure would even be legal within the Federation. Or safe for humans. He was glad Leonard had not asked about that vial.

            “But you are worried,” Gop argued, colors bubbling in a small rainbow that Pavel was very fond of watching. “You want your bond with Leonard to succeed. We will do what we can for you.”

            Pavel’s heart skipped a beat, his breath catching.

            _We will do what we can for you._

            Those were the exact same words Oma had used down in the reservoir. Pavel searched Gop’s face for any sign that they knew what they had said, how similar they sounded to the other Telk, but Gop just stared back, colors bubbling from one to the next before settling on a clear blue. Pavel hesitated, wondering if they somehow knew as well.

            “Like what?” he asked, already racing through possibilities in his head.

            “Like gifts!” Gop exclaimed, their blue brightening into a pleased neon shade. “We know that humans show affection by giving gifts.”

            “And you gave me oils,” Pavel reminded them.

            “Those were not a gift!” Gop protested, somehow sounding scandalized, orange flashing over their skin. “You required assistance for copulation!”

            Pavel could not help his laugh, because he had cornered himself on that one yesterday, and it felt good to loosen up a little. Across from him, Fil’s colors settled on blue as well, apparently recognizing the shift in Pavel’s demeanor. “I appreciate your assistance in this matter,” Pavel said earnestly.

            Before he could continue to protest their interference, Fil said something to Gop in their native tongue, soft and musical, with flashes of colors too rapid for Pavel to track, their tentacles giving precise flutters. Gop turned purple and then blue and flashed gestures back, and then cast a glance to Pavel, as though assessing him. Pavel swallowed nervously. With a small flail, Gop moved away from them, across the cavern to a storage area like the one Leonard had searched for a razor.

            When they returned, they held a small box in their hands, which they presented to Pavel as proudly as any child with a crayon masterpiece. Pavel took it without hesitation, not wanting to offend either of them, and set it on the table before him. Part of him wanted to ask what it was, but opening the box would be faster, so he did.

            Inside, nestled in a fold of soft cloth that looked like it absorbed static, lay a small, round device the size of an old Earth ruble, the kind his father had collected when he was a small child. He glanced up. “What is it?”

            “A trinket,” Gop said, colors beaming with pride. “You must activate it.”

            That, Pavel decided, could end very poorly, but he removed the disc from the box and rubbed a thumb over the surface, looking for how to turn it on. Gop reached over and centered it on his palm for him, and then tapped the top of it.

            It gave a little vibration as it came to life, the surface shifting and spinning and then light burst forth and resolved into a little 3D image. Slowly, it rotated clockwise, a projection of some kind of insect-like creature with long antennae and three pairs of diaphanous wings. On its carapace was a symbol that Pavel recognized from some of the medical equipment in Omaru’s section.

            “What is it?” he asked, staring at the shifting colors as the creature rotated.

            “It is a sornika,” Gop answered excited. They hunkered down a little, colors flashing thoughtfully for a second before they added: “You say maybe… it causes sutures. When you hold one to a wound, it bites, and its…” they paused, thinking of the word, and Pavel was surprised they even possibly knew words for bug parts. “Its mandible will pull flesh edges together. Then you-“ they made a slicing motion with a tentacle through the projection, as if chopping the head from the thorax. “It does not release in death.”

            “Oh,” Pavel said, looking at the hologram with a little more respect.

            “The sornika was one of our first medical tools, a long time ago,” Fil explained gently, drawing his attention. “Now, it serves to denote medical services. When we gather on festival years, doctors wear this symbol on their clothes. Gop made this device, to give to Oma, but they can make another. We make a lot of holographic technology.”

            “You do?” Pavel said, perking a little at the news. So far, the two had not shared any holographic tech with him, but he could imagine how differently their holo-tech might be given their unique views on the universe. “What sort?”

            “Toys,” Gop said readily, changing a bright purple. “Entertainment.”

            “Perhaps we could schedule time in the holo-suites?” Fil suggested to Gop, who lit up neon blue bubbling with purple.

            “Agree!” Gop exclaimed, popping up and immediately heading for the door.

            Fil’s hand shot out automatically, tentacles grabbing for Gop’s arm and wrapping around, bringing them to a sudden halt. The way Fil held their body, reminiscent of patience and exasperation at the same time, reminded Pavel starkly of the way Leonard looked at the Captain when he had come up with a particularly hare-brained scheme. It was the kind of look which drew on immense fondness for a person in order to continue to deal with their antics.

            “Are you going to go off by yourself?” Fil asked, and Gop immediately colored pink and then shifted into a new, unidentifiable color. “You will not get in tonight even if you did.”

            “I know,” Gop returned quickly, settling back at the end of the table. “I was not, of course.”

            Fil made a noise Pavel did not recognize and changed to a smooth blue-green. “Of course,” they agreed in a tone that might have been patronizing if it had not been so fond, and Pavel’s belly sank as he realized what he was watching, why it felt familiar.

            The entire exchange, the rash action, the patient reaction, the fondness and exasperation… this was how Leonard and the Captain interacted. Leonard put up with things from Captain Kirk that no one else would, except perhaps Commander Spock. Pavel had seen more than one such fond look on the faces of both men, even when they were bickering or teasing.

            Then there was the way Leonard stayed on the bridge just to keep an eye on the Captain, the way the Captain always seemed to end up in sickbay even on routine missions… and everyone knew how often the two of them holed up alone together in one of their rooms or the other, often with a bottle of something too expensive for casual drinking with friends.

            After waking from his nightmares, Leonard had so softly told Pavel that having someone around usually helped. There was only one person Pavel could imagine Leonard letting so close often enough to be a _usually_.

            “Да чтоб меня…” he murmured under his breath. No wonder Leonard had been holding back. No wonder he had thought their situation would turn into a mess when they got back to the Enterprise, if Leonard was already involved with the Captain. “Чёрт…”

            “Да чтоб меня, Чёрт,” Gop repeated carefully, mimicking Pavel’s voice to an almost eerie degree. “I like this!”

            Pavel did a poor job containing his noise of distress. “No, you must not say this,” he said seriously. “These are bad words.”

            Gop turned a pretty shade of tangerine. “What have they done?”

            “What?” Pavel asked, confused. Across from him, Fil’s tangerine shattered into pink and climbed into a color Pavel had not seen previously, something cool like purple but _not_.

            “What have the bad words done?” Gop repeated, so tonelessly, that Pavel caught on only an instant later. They were yanking his chain.

            “Дурак,” Pavel said, making a face at Gop that clearly communicated the fond exasperation if not the actual translation.

            Gop bubbled with blues and purples and two different unnamed colors as they laughed with that high, silly noise. “Pavel, you must teach us these words!” Gop told him, voice still high with amusement. “We can trade.”

            “Gop,” Fil chided. “You should not teach Pavel impolites.”

            Pavel laughed. “Impolites?” he echoed, realizing that they must not have known a better Standard translation. “Standard calls them swear words, or curse words, or cuss words, sometimes. But you are correct, they are not very polite.”

            Gop fluttered with exasperated colors and then leaned on the table. “We are alone here. There is no one to be polite to, agree? Here, I will tell one to you. _Prefii auo yaloru i a na_.”

            As soon as Gop said it, Fil made a disgusted noise and turned brown, chiding Gop in their own language rather than Standard, to which Gop replied while warbling that silly noise from their chest. Whatever they argued about ended quickly, and Gop turned back to Pavel, colors smoothing into a soft blue.

            “What does it mean?” Pavel asked, not wanting to repeat the phrase if it would irritate Fil again.

            Gop made a faint humming noise, vibrating and shifting between blue and orange, and then settled on blue again. “I do not know a Standard translation. It is… a suggestion to check oneself for yalo ancestry. They are creatures from above with very foul chemicals.”

            “It is not a nice thing to say,” Fil added. “But, it is said usually when someone has not been very nice, either, as a reminder to stop.”

            “You say it,” Gop encouraged Pavel. “There are no colors or chemicals, so even humans can say this one.”

            Pavel cleared his throat and looked to Fil, but Fil just remained a very patient shade of burnt orange and did not comment. “Prefii auo… yaloru i a na.” He had learned several foreign languages before ever reaching the Academy to study, and had a pretty good ability to remember small strings of words. Still, the Telk language was so fluid and soft, it did not feel like it belonged in his mouth.

            Gop lit up anyway, powder blue ratcheting up into a clear sapphire. “Very good! Now you can teach us your words,” they prompted.

            Pavel flushed, embarrassed to remember he had started this. “The ones I used were not Standard, they were my mother tongue. But, I will teach you some in Standard, if that is okay?” He was pretty sure he would not be able to look his mother in the eyes next time he saw her, if he taught an alien species to cuss in Russian.

            “Agree!” Gop said, colors zinging between blue and purple, and Pavel wondered exactly how much trouble he was going to be in with Leonard the next time he saw the man.

            He decided he hoped it was a lot.

 

* * *

 

            When they finally returned to the medical labs, it was much later than usual. Pavel had lost track of time talking with Filgop about things he probably should not have been teaching them while learning about things they probably should not have been teaching him in return. The Telk had very few curses, most of which were aimed at the betterment of the colony rather than name-calling or ill-wishes. Pavel had not known enough bad words in Standard to occupy them for long, and eventually they had come back around to talking about the advanced holographic technology of the Telk.

            Which was, as it turned out, far beyond what the Federation had so far developed. The coin Gop had given him for Leonard really was exactly that- a useless trinket, no more impressive than a paperclip would be to a human. Their real tech lay in the holo labs, halls full of small rooms that were capable of projecting entire holographic environments and, more amazingly, modulating the projection frequencies to allow a minimal amount of physical interaction. It was, as far as Pavel understood from their descriptions, capable only of basic scenery, but that alone could prove an invaluable resource on board a cramped starship in the void of space.

            “This is what you should trade to us, to the Federation,” Pavel had told them seriously. He had then attempted to explain the recreation rooms aboard ‘Fleet vessels, and how priceless the ability to step off the ship and into any desired environment would be. The mental stress relief alone made it worth bringing up at the next diplomatic meeting.

            “The Federation would pay anything you wanted for such technology,” Pavel had assured them both.

            “Anything?” Gop had asked quietly, colors paling so much they nearly disappeared completely.

            “Anything legal,” Pavel had corrected, wondering if Gop would bring it up, maybe ask for aid with their probe. The Federation, and Starfleet in particular, would likely give them whatever they required to finish and launch it. “It would be worth a lot, at any rate.”

            In all, the long day spent with Filgop curbed Pavel’s irritation, replacing it with a genuine excitement for discovery. This was, after all, the reason that he had signed up with Starfleet in the first place- he wanted to go places no one had ever been to before, meet new people and learn about new technology. Sequestered away in the technological research labs with Filgop, Pavel had acutely felt the success of that endeavor.

            Now, as they headed back toward the medical labs with a large package of food tucked under one arm for himself and Leonard to share for dinner, the feeling began to ebb. His stomach turned over unhappily at the thought of confronting Leonard again, of having to face the rejection of the morning and make it worse by asking questions. He had to, though. He had to know.

            The door hissed and shifted away from Gop’s touch, and no one in the medical lab even looked up at the intrusion- not even Leonard, who sat alone at a table surrounded by dozens of small, glowing plants. The scowl on his face told Pavel that whatever Leonard was trying to do with them, it was not working and he appeared to be taking it out on the PADD in his hands.

            As Leonard gave the screen another harsh jab, Pavel set the dinner package down on the table with a loud thunk. Leonard glanced up at the motion and startled, blinking and looking around the room like an owl in sunlight, as if a clock might appear. It would not- the Telk kept time the same way as Vulcans, by an impeccable internal clock set to their 30-hour day. Even underground where day and night had no meaning, their tracking never seemed to fail.

            “You’re back,” Leonard said, gaze falling on Pavel at last. His hands gripped a little too tightly on the edges of the PADD, an indication that he had probably also spent the day thinking too much. “Is it that late already?”

            “It is later,” Pavel said quietly. He should have returned over an hour ago, but he was not surprised that Leonard had not noticed the he was missing. Yesterday, he might have been, but not today, and the loss of what he had never really had stung more than he could appreciate. It annoyed him, how much he still wanted Leonard to miss him. “We lost track of time, too.”

            Leonard snorted. “Maybe _you_ did,” he said, tipping his head toward the Telk around them. Filgop were over with Omaru, delivering the dinner they had brought. “But these folks are like the damn Vulcans. I don’t think they ever lose track of time.”

            Something ticked at Pavel’s mind when Leonard said it aloud, but it slipped through his mental fingers when he dug at it. “What are you doing?” he asked instead, coming around the side of the table and slipping onto the seat beside Leonard.

            A heated noise of frustration escaped Leonard, and he dropped the PADD onto the table with a clatter. “Nothing, apparently,” he spat, and almost immediately closed his eyes and took a slow breath. He rubbed at his forehead and Pavel wondered privately if he had a headache again. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault I can’t get this thing to do anything useful.”

            Pavel sighed, thawing a little at seeing Leonard’s obvious discomfort. “I brought food,” Pavel told him gently, opening the package and offering a small, blue pastry to Leonard. “What are you trying to get it to do?”

            “Change colors,” Leonard admitted, still managing to sound petulant and angry without being hurtful this time. “These are the clippings from the reservoir. Oma just brought them over a little bit ago, and showed me how to talk to them.”

            Pavel blinked. “Talk to them?” he asked, irritation taking a back burner to his piqued curiosity.

            “Well, kind of,” Leonard hedged, snatching up the PADD again, seemingly oblivious to Pavel’s offer of food. “They changed a bunch of colors, and the plants changed a bunch of colors back. I found a couple programs that’ll turn the screen a different color, but they don’t answer me because I’m too damn slow with it.”

            “Dammitjim,” came a soft voice from behind Pavel, and he turned to see that Filgop had joined them, both a brilliant blue.

            Leonard looked up at them, confusion scrawled all over his face, and Pavel had to cough to cover his laugh. He could not do a thing to hide the blush dusting his cheeks when Leonard looked at him next, so he just shrugged helplessly.

            “Pavel says this is your favorite curse,” Gop informed Leonard very seriously, leaning forward and brightening. “He knows a lot of them.”

            “I’ll bet,” Leonard said, fixing Pavel with a frown he clearly did not mean. “That one’s not exactly standard, you know.”

            “Agree!” Gop said excitedly as Pavel smirked at Leonard, keeping his mouth shut because after spending all day with Filgop, he knew exactly what was coming. “We learned other non-Standard curses as well! Чёрт and Мудак and-“

            “Okay, alright, enough of that,” Leonard interrupted, raising a hand to stop them. “You taught them to cuss in Russian?”

            “And Romanian and Spanish and French and-“ Pavel began.

            “Yeah, okay,” Leonard said, stopping him too. “Jim’s going to have a thing or two to say about that, you know.”

            “I know,” Pavel agreed, smiling as he tamped down the ache that squeezed at his chest. Somehow, he thought the Captain was going to have a thing or two to say about a lot of things that had happened down here. “Why do you think I taught them to say Dammit, Jim? I do not say this.”

            Leonard looked just as surprised at the bark of laughter that earned Pavel. “You little shit,” Leonard marveled, and Pavel reminded himself not to be too proud of the affection that colored the words. They still needed to talk. “He might’ve blamed me, too, if you’d stuck with just Standard.”

            Pavel smiled softly, dropping his gaze. “Why do you think I did not?” He was annoyed that Leonard had not said anything about Jim, but not annoyed enough to let him be in trouble alone. He could not decide if Leonard’s warm smile made him more or less annoyed with the man. “Let me see this,” he said, instead of giving voice to any of his thoughts. “You eat.”

            When Leonard passed over his PADD, his fingers brushed against Pavel’s with a surety that had been absent even just a day ago, but Pavel could not stop the little jerk backward he gave at the contact. He also did not miss the flicker of hurt in Leonard’s eyes, or the scrunch of concern in his brows before it disappeared. But Leonard did not mention it, and Pavel turned his attention down to the device.

            While he worked, Leonard picked at the food he had brought up, and Gop and Fil stood silently at the end of the table observing them. Gop played with the plants, one tentacled hand splayed above them changing colors in soft patterns. Although it distracted Pavel to a degree, it also helped him to understand what the doctor had been talking about. It did not take him long to fiddle his way through a simple program.

            By the time he slid the PADD back across the small space between them, Leonard had finished eating. He had fallen still, watching Pavel with the same sort of contemplative look he wore when his medical instruments were not telling him what he wanted to hear. Pavel knew why, especially when Leonard made certain to pull the PADD over to himself by a corner, neatly avoiding touching Pavel again.

            “What’d you do?” Leonard asked, puzzling at the series of buttons on the screen for only a second before he tapped out a quick sequence. The screen lit up and began changing colors as soon as he tapped the red button labeled _enter_. “Oh.”

            “You wanted to talk,” Pavel said quietly, nodding his head toward the plants when Leonard looked up sharply. “With the plants.”

            “I don’t know what I’m saying,” Leonard pointed out, but he was already tapping in a new sequence.

            As soon as he finished, he turned the screen toward the plants and Gop withdrew their hand to let him try. The PADD shifted colors, then fell dark. Pavel held his breath, wondering if it would even work, and after a second, the plants began to change colors in response, red then blue then yellow then red again, where they stayed, stained the color of rich summer strawberries. Gop colored an amused shade of purple.

            “Maybe they will talk to you tomorrow,” Gop said warmly. “When you are not so mean.”

            “Mean!” Leonard scoffed, bristling at the insinuation. “Are y’telling me I just offended _plants_?”

            Fil’s color changed to match Gop’s. “You have frightened them,” they explained. “Perhaps tomorrow you can learn better colors from Omaru.”

            “Those were colors from Omaru!” Leonard protested, looking to Pavel like he wanted to ask for help, then appeared to immediately think better of it. “Look, I copied exactly what they said earlier, and the plants didn’t-“ He twirled a finger at the plants to encompass everything they had just done.

            Pavel tried not to think about how much he enjoyed seeing Leonard worked up until he lost words.

            Leonard’s attention shifted before anyone said anything else, and Pavel turned to see Omaru approaching the group. The Telk exchanged greetings in soft touches and murmurs, their colors muting so pale that they almost disappeared entirely, before Oma turned to the two humans.

            “It is very late,” they said gently, and Pavel noticed just how _empty_ the med cavern had gotten. It seemed everyone else had gone back to their quarters for the night. He wondered if they had kept Omaru here waiting on them. “Tomorrow, we will do something different, if you agree?”

            “Different?” Leonard echoed, looking dubiously at Pavel, who shrugged. “With the plants?”

            “No,” Oma said, and Pavel’s belly tightened a little at the use of the word. It felt like the first time he had heard them say it, down in the reservoir, except that Filgop were right there listening, watching. If Oma meant to give them away, this was as good a chance as any. “A new place, like we showed you our garden.”

            Pavel relaxed a little, and saw Leonard do the same. “We would like that,” he said, offering up as big of a smile as he could muster, and let it turn into a yawn. Beside him, Leonard smiled.

            “Come on, up you get,” Leonard told him, ushering him to his feet and grabbing up the PADD and the food Pavel had gotten for himself and promptly neglected to eat. Leonard did not have to say the word _bedtime_ for Pavel to hear it in his tone. “Should we meet you here?”

            “No,” Oma said, giving a little shiver but not changing colors from their pale, powder blue. “We will come to you near mark ten.”

            Gop reached for Pavel as soon as he was around the end of the table, putting leather-soft hands out for Pavel to touch. “If there is time after, perhaps you can bring Leonard to the holo-suite cavern. We will ask about sharing this technology.”

            “Holo-suite?” Leonard echoed, but Pavel ignored him.

            “I would like that,” Pavel said, brushing hands in a farewell gesture. He copied the motion to Fil, and then with Omaru, before turning a smile to Leonard. “Shall we?”

            Leonard gave him an odd look, but nodded, following after him when he headed for the exit. To his credit, he did not ask questions on the way back through the utterly deserted corridors, or when they reached their room, or even after the door had closed. It was not until he set down the food and the PADD and found Pavel staring at him that he let out a resigned sigh.

            “Well, out with it,” he said roughly, and Pavel did not miss the little twitch as he kept himself from folding his arms defensively across his chest. “What happened?”

            Pavel’s gut twisted a little in guilt, and he had to remind himself that he did not have any proof, only his own guesses, and it was not fair to either of them to assume the truth. “Nothing happened,” he explained, and then held up his hands to forestall argument. “I had a lot of time to think today, about all of this.”

            “Oh,” Leonard said, shoulders dropping along with his gaze. “Right.”

            Strangely, he did not look like a man caught in a lie, Pavel thought. He looked more like a man resigned to a firing squad, and the defeated posture softened whatever accusation Pavel might have made. “I am worried about how Captain Kirk will react to what we have done,” he said gently instead.

            Leonard’s gaze dragged up, brows knitting. “How…” he started, trailing off as he processed. “You think Jim would have a problem with this? Us doing…?”

            “I think he must,” Pavel said, trying to sound less miserable than he felt about that particular truth. If nothing else, the captain was fiercely protective of the people and things he loved, and Leonard most certainly fell into the former category. “Don’t you? We did not get a chance to tell him anything before-”

            “He’s the ass who stranded us here,” Leonard interrupted, waving a hand. “And I suspect he knew more than he let on anyhow, faking like he lost the transmission when it was clear as day he damn well didn’t. And I-“ He stopped abruptly and looked away again.

            “And you…?” Pavel asked softly. He had been so worried about what the captain would think of Leonard touching someone else that he had not at all considered how Leonard might feel about it. Wanting something was entirely different than facing the repercussions of getting it. He thought maybe they were both learning that lesson just now.

            Leonard shifted his weight, not looking at him, clearly weighing his words. He gave a little shake of his head, the kind that spoke of surrender, and looked somewhere over Pavel’s shoulder. “It’s not like Jim never heard anything about you,” he admitted, low, the words barely given voice. “You’re very attractive, Pavel. It won’t be a surprise to him, what we’ve…what’s happened, except maybe that you agreed to it. Hell, he probably planned on things going this way.”

            “And you did not,” Pavel concluded.

            He took another step closer and saw Leonard tense minutely, watched him swallow hard. Pavel halted, Leonard’s words catching up with him like a punch to the gut. Leonard _wanted_ him. Leonard had not expected ever to have him, never expected him to agree to anything, but he had wanted him. Leonard had spoken to Jim about him, in such a way that Jim knew what Leonard wanted from Pavel. In such a way that Leonard believed Jim would not have a problem with what they had done, what they might yet do.

            Pavel let out a shaky breath, body and mind alight with the realization.

            “No,” Leonard answered softly, voice catching. “Pavel, I didn’t-“

             “But you wanted to,” Pavel insisted, and watching Leonard’s fingers twitch he knew he had hit the correct nerve. He thought about how he had told Leonard that they were friends. That it was just sex. That it would not be a mess.

            He had not been entirely truthful; he knew it would absolutely be a mess, but it would be only Pavel’s problem, and he figured that was what counted.

            _It’s not a question of whether or not I want you_.

            “You wanted to,” he repeated, the revelation making him bolder. As long as it would be a mess either way, he might as well make it worthwhile. There would be time to get lost in regret later. “And you want to touch me, now.”

            “Yes,” Leonard whispered. He made no move to come closer, holding himself as tightly as piano wire ready to snap. He met Pavel’s eyes. “But, Pavel, you gotta know I-“

            “Then you should,” Pavel interrupted, not wanting to hear that Leonard would never have done so back home or how it would have to end when they returned. He did not want to hear excuses or apologies, not for this- not for having wanted Pavel. Tonight, he wanted to hear Leonard’s voice break over his name so that he could have that when he had nothing else. “If you want to, and the captain will not be upset, you should touch me. Like you did this morning.”

            “With no Telk to fool?” Leonard pointed out gently. It felt obvious. It felt like Leonard holding open a door for Pavel to back out through, to say he did not really mean it.

            Leonard clearly did not want to go, yet he seemed to expect Pavel to leave.

            Pavel stayed right where he was.

            “Yes,” he replied, heart skipping at the relieved rush of breath Leonard let out. He _wanted_ this just as much as Pavel did, however that happened, and Pavel saw no reason at all for them not to have what they wanted, just this once. He just needed Leonard to see that it was okay, too. “There were also no Telk on the Enterprise when you spoke of me to the captain.”

            Leonard snorted and though it still sounded a little tense, Pavel saw the moment his shoulders relaxed in surrender. “No,” he agreed softly. “There weren’t.”

            Something in Pavel loosened at the affirmation. In part, he understood that this was temporary. He understood that Leonard had never before said anything about wanting Pavel, and perhaps would never say anything again later, but he was here now. They both were, and his admission had given Pavel tacit permission to proceed. If this was his only chance, Pavel intended to make sure neither of them forgot it.

            He closed the space between them in two quick strides and when he reached with both hands for Leonard’s face, he found Leonard already leaning forward to meet him. He did not bother to stop the sound of relief he made when their lips met, warm and soft and nowhere near gently for all the earlier hesitation. None of their previous kisses even came close to how sharp and bright and hungry this one made him feel.

            Whatever reservations Leonard might have had, there was no room left for them beneath the sudden press of his hands on Pavel’s hips. Fingers tightening, he pulled Pavel closer and drew back just enough to gentle the kiss. Pavel opened to the first swipe of his tongue with a groan, knees weak.

            _This_ was what he wanted, he thought dizzily as Leonard shifted forward a little, one broad thigh nudging between Pavel’s own. Whatever Pavel had said, whatever he had done this time, he had found the give in the boundary between them. He fisted his hands in Leonard’s shirt and pushed his knuckles into the warmth of Leonard’s chest, urging him silently toward the bed.

            Leonard let himself be moved one step, two, and then halted. Pavel did not, pressing forward when Leonard pulled out of their kiss, but when Leonard skimmed broad palms up the bare skin of Pavel’s back, under his shirt, Pavel forgot about kissing for a second. Closing his eyes against the flood of sensations – Leonard’s thick leg between his again, hands spread wide to cover as much skin as possible as he worked to uncover more – Pavel moaned.

            Leonard’s hands stuttered at the sound, a mumbled curse on his lips, then he swept the shirt over Pavel’s head in a hurried motion.

            As soon as he was free of it, Pavel crowded back into Leonard’s space, sliding their chests together hard enough that Leonard stumbled backward. Pavel greedily swallowed the doctor’s warm chuckle in another kiss, tired of waiting, of _wanting_. He pressed so hard that Leonard had to take a step back again, and again, and then Len’s calves hit the bed’s edge and he let go of Pavel to land with a whump in the bedding.

            Pavel did not hesitate, crawling up the length of him to capture his lips again, fingers tangling in the hem of Leonard’s shirt even as he realized the problem with their new positions. Rearing back, he gave Leonard room to sit and scrabble out of his own loose shirt, and then Leonard’s hands brushed down his sides to curl at his hips to quickly bring them tighter together.

            When Leonard bucked up enough to move them farther onto the bed, Pavel gave a surprised yelp and held on, a shiver prickling down his spine at the blatant display of strength. Wriggling, he settled his knees to either side of Leonard’s hips, gasping at the feel of Leonard’s stubbled chin scraping over his collarbone.

            “You okay?” Leonard breathed, voice raw and unsteady already.

            Briefly, Pavel considered not answering the check with words, but they had agreed to be clear. “Yes,” he confirmed, cupping Leonard’s jaw with both hands. “Yes, _yes_ ,” he repeated, dragging him up into a kiss, all lips and tongue and the barest scrape of teeth.

            Leonard’s stalled hands found skin again, openly roving the way Pavel had wanted all week, and Pavel was gratified to feel his own desperation reflected back at him, finally. Pavel broke the kiss to drop his head back and Leonard did not miss a beat, lips finding the curve of his jaw, mouthing along it to Pavel’s ear and down the line of his throat.

            Then he stopped short of where Pavel wanted him, and Pavel could not help the whine that escaped, his fingers threading into Leonard’s hair. “Don’t-“

            “Sorry,” Leonard murmured thickly, interrupting. “Sorry, you told me not to-“

            “Len, please,” Pavel breathed out against his cheek, curling closer to give Leonard access. “ _Please_ do.”

            He felt the shudder down Leonard’s body, the warm exhale against the crook of his neck before Leonard closed his lips over the tendon there, over that sweet spot that fired lightning through all of Pavel’s nerves. Pavel did not bother swallowing his groan of appreciation, fingers tightening in the hair at the base of Leonard’s skull to keep him there, encourage him to keep doing _exactly_ what he was doing with his tongue.

            Leonard’s fingers tightened on his hips when he ground down against him, that glorious mouth leaving his skin barren as Leonard breathed out sharply, sounding gutted. Pavel answered the sound with one of his own, repeating the roll of his hips, desperate to feel the hard line of Leonard’s cock against his own.

            “Please,” he begged, sagging closer to Leonard to nuzzle in against the crook of his neck, arms looped over Leonard’s shoulders. He was not sure what he was asking for, exactly, except _more_. More of everything, more of _more_.

            Leonard ran both hands up and down his flank slowly, soothingly. “Please?” he repeated back, thumbs cruising the top edge of the Telk skirt, and Pavel could have cursed him were it not for how _good_ he felt.

            “More,” Pavel said instead, because that at least he could articulate through the haze of arousal. He bucked his hips, rubbing up against Leonard again just to feel his grip tighten. “Less clothing, more-“ He bit back a moan as Leonard’s hands smoothed from the top of his hips to the curve of his ass, down to where it met the tops of his thighs, and squeezed. Pavel jerked and then froze still at the sudden burst of pleasure. “Len, _please_.”

            Seconds later, Pavel’s center of gravity shifted and whirled as Leonard lifted him partway off the bed and settled him on his back. Pavel let his head fall back, smiling, and Leonard did not waste the opportunity to lay wet, open-mouthed kisses to the exposed line of his throat.

            At the gentle tap to his hip, Pavel lifted up, letting Leonard slide the fabric down his legs and off, and then he sat up to return the favor. He traced nimble fingers over the edge of Leonard’s Telk skirt, looking up at Leonard through his lashes. Leonard’s hand found his wrist, fingers curling loosely around it, not stopping him, so Pavel pressed his palms to Leonard’s heated skin and slid them under the waistband.

            He liked how the fabric caught on the rise of Leonard’s cock on the way down, and how Leonard closed his eyes when Pavel’s fingers flickered over him to free him. Then the loose garment slipped down Leonard’s legs to pool at his feet and he was stepping out of it and back into Pavel’s space until Pavel had to scramble back to let him on the bed again.

            Leonard’s weight settled over him, warm and now naked, and Pavel decided that was even better than when he had been on top. Safer, heavier, calmer. Better.

            “Better?” Leonard murmured, amused, the fingers of one hand slotting into the dips between Pavel’s ribs for a second on its journey down his chest, and Pavel realized he must have said the word aloud.

            Instead of answering the tease, Pavel took advantage of his new position to run his hands over every inch of Leonard he could reach. One hand dragged over Leonard’s shoulder and neck, the other skimming down his chest to feel the caged pounding of his heart, the bead of his nipple under Pavel’s palm, the swell of his floating rib as Leonard took a breath before letting Pavel pull him into another kiss.

            Pavel moaned and bucked against where Leonard’s palm held his hip, trying to get him to move, and Leonard acquiesced readily. The relief when Leonard finally closed his hand over Pavel’s hardness knocked the breath from his chest, leaving him gasping.

            “Easy, darlin’, breathe,” Leonard told him softly, ghosting lips over Pavel’s jaw and neck. He found the curve of Pavel’s collarbone and the sharp feel of suction dragged Pavel back to himself as he clutched at Leonard’s head, shifting him.

            Pavel should have been embarrassed at the keen that rose in his throat, but he did not have enough sense left when Leonard acquiesced to his silent request, putting his mouth to work against the crook of Pavel’s shoulder. With a whimper, Pavel snaked a hand into Leonard’s hair to keep him there, thrusting up in time with Leonard’s steady strokes. Somewhere in the fog of arousal he recognized that the nails he scraped over Leonard’s back would leave marks, but he could not stop.

            Leonard’s hand dragged down his cock once more and then slid farther back to cup Pavel’s sensitive sack, longest finger dipping to rub firmly behind it at the same moment he set his teeth to Pavel’s neck and sucked, _hard_.

            Pavel’s awareness whited out for an instant, a moment, a minute, while pleasure curled every sense in upon himself until all that remained was his own body and how _good_ it felt.

            When Pavel cracked his eyes open again minutes later, fighting against the post-orgasm lethargy dragging at him, Leonard had dropped down to stretch out along his side, palm sticky and warm on Pavel’s hip and a smile on his face. Too smug for Pavel’s liking, and so he twisted to wipe it off his face with a kiss that was readily returned. Pavel grabbed at Leonard’s shoulder when he tried to pull away, pushed and rolled them both until Pavel was once again astride Leonard’s hips, cradling him between his thighs, grinding down once over Leonard’s still-hard length.

            “We’re not finished,” he stated, searching Leonard’s eyes for any sign of disquiet. “I want you, I want…” He rocked again, rubbing the crack of his ass over Leonard’s cock in a very clear message. “Please, Len, can we…?”

            Leonard glided broad hands up and down Pavel’s tense thighs soothingly, but his chuckle sounded resigned. “Pavel, we don’t have any kind of protection,” he began.

            Pavel snorted softly. “From what?” he said plainly. He had nothing to give Leonard, and he trusted that Leonard would not have let it go this far if he suffered anything that could harm Pavel. Leonard did not have to love him to be that conscientious of his own actions. “You, of all people, should know it is safe.”

            Leonard chewed his bottom lip for a second, and then nodded agreement. “Okay. Think you can go again?”

            “I think you should find out,” Pavel goaded with a smile, rolling his hips again just to feel Leonard twitch, just to hear him groan helplessly.

            “Yeah,” Leonard agreed. “Yeah, okay.” And then he planted his feet flat on the bed behind Pavel and bucked up, dumping Pavel onto his back again and slinging a leg over him to keep him there. “Stay,” he ordered softly.

            Pavel could think of nothing on this planet or his own that could have moved him as he watched Leonard stretch over the edge of the bed to grab up one of the vials of oil still sitting in a box on the floor where they’d been left that morning. “Not that one,” Pavel advised, catching a flash of red in Leonard’s hands. He nodded when Leonard held up the clear vial instead.

            Leonard shuffled until he could nudge Pavel’s knees apart, but instead of opening the vial like Pavel expected, he just set it beside them, settling between Pavel’s legs now instead of over them. Pavel did not mind, fingers threading into Leonard’s hair once more as he leaned to kiss him, close enough to rub chests, far enough for Leonard to get his hands on him still. He could feel Leonard’s hard length pressed into the crease where thigh met hip, and he wriggled just to feel the little bolt of pleasure the pressure sent through him.

            Pulling away from the languid kiss after a bit, Leonard trailed wet kisses down Pavel’s neck, and Pavel accommodated him willingly, tipping his head to give him better access. His own hands went wandering in return, fingers scraping gently down Leonard’s chest, one nail catching on a peaked nipple in a way that made Leonard jump and groan.

            “Again,” Leonard mumbled into the hollow of Pavel’s throat. “Do that ah-h!” His words broke apart when Pavel obeyed instantly, thumbnail flicking over the apparently sensitive nub.

            For a minute Leonard actually fell still, eyes closed and each unsteady breath feathering across Pavel’s skin. He nuzzled close when Pavel pinched both at once, tucking his nose under the curve of Pavel’s jaw and Pavel could not help but smile. It was good to know he was not the only one with buttons to push.

            He closed his eyes when Leonard made a soft, determined noise and began to mouth at the other side of his neck, both of them taking their time in shared exploration now, every scrape of teeth or whisper of lips making Pavel’s body thrum with the beginnings of arousal again.

            Leonard released Pavel’s neck to kiss down his chest, pausing to lavish attention to first one nipple and then the other. He nipped softly at the edge of Pavel’s ribcage, coaxing him back toward arousal. Pavel pushed his hips up against where Leonard’s hands pressed them to the bed, just to feel the strength in Leonard’s hold and Leonard groaned, leaning more of his weight onto his palm for a second. Pavel could not be certain in which language he cursed, only that it made Leonard chuckle hotly against his belly.

            The kiss Leonard placed next to his navel left Pavel a little breathless, knees falling wider around Leonard in anticipation as he processed the potentials incoming, where Leonard was heading with his talented mouth.

            But no, he realized as Leonard stopped to glance sidelong at the motion of Pavel’s leg, then looked up to catch Pavel’s gaze.

            Pavel could practically see the new boundary being drawn in the tense line of Leonard’s shoulders. That would be too personal, too intimate for a case of survival, or even for a one-off with someone he did not intend to keep.

            Written in the way Leonard smoothed one glorious hand up and over his knee and down the inside of his thigh was an apology Pavel was loath to read, a reminder that this was not the beginning of anything real.

            Pavel managed to smile around the ache in his chest.

            He had asked for this. Begged. It would be silly of him to back out just because he caught a glimpse of the truth peeking through, but at least it cleared his head a little. He flailed one hand out without looking, fingers coiling around the vial of oil. He watched Leonard track the motion, accepting the vial without a word.

            Carefully, Leonard adjusted to kneel between Pavel’s legs, unstoppering the vial with one hand as he did so. He brushed his free hand over Pavel’s thigh from knee to hip, like he could not help it, like he wanted to just once more, before pouring some of the oil into his palm to warm.

            A moment later, slick fingers stroked down to work and tease at Pavel’s opening, steady and sure, and Pavel closed his eyes to relax as Leonard pressed one inside. Pavel did not bother trying to hold in the soft, needy noise he made, pushing back against the intrusion, knowing Leonard would go too slowly if he let him. It did not help; Leonard only continued to stroke patiently in and out, until Pavel actually relaxed enough for him to add a second finger without resistance.

Leonard hummed contentedly, wrapping his dry hand around Pavel’s knee and stroking his longest finger along the crease behind it as he slowly worked to open Pavel up with his other hand. Pavel gasped as pleasure sparked from his knee straight up his thigh, hips jumping with no sure direction, cock twitching with renewed interest in the proceedings.

He lifted his head to look down his body at Leonard with wide eyes. That had never happened to him before, not with anyone else.

            “Y’alright?” Leonard asked quietly, eyes ticking over him.

            “Yes,” Pavel said instantly, not wanting him to stop either motion. Leonard curled his finger against the underside of Pavel’s knee again and a surprising jolt of pleasure shot down Pavel’s spine once more, yanking another startled noise from him. “I just never… that spot…“

            Leonard smiled and twisted his fingers inside of Pavel before pulling them out to fetch more oil. “There are a lot of spots to try,” Leonard informed him, gently pressing two fingers back in.

            Pavel let his head fall back, brow scrunching at the stretch. “Oh,” he answered breathlessly. He wanted to find all of them. He wanted _Leonard_ to find all of them, and he wanted a chance to find all of them on Leonard.

            “Not all of them are on the outside,” Leonard mused slyly an instant before he flexed his fingers just-so and Pavel choked on air at the sweep of pleasure that liquefied his joints. Leonard chuckled and hitched Pavel’s leg to kiss the side of his thigh before he did it again.

            “Leonard!” Pavel scolded, voice too raw to hold any actual heat, the trembling of his body lending his voice a wobble.

            Leonard laughed, and the sound shivered over Pavel’s oversensitive skin. “I’ll play nice,” he conceded genially, rubbing his stubbly cheek gently against the inside of Pavel’s knee, pulling another groan from him.

            True to his word, Leonard gentled his motions, his even, twisting strokes keeping away from Pavel’s prostate. Pavel dug fingertips into the bedding to ground himself, eyes closing as he flexed onto Leonard’s fingers, working with his steady rhythm. By the time Leonard carefully slicked his fingers again, finally pressing in three, Pavel was starting to feel the effects, the tip of his cock tingling as it began to refill.

            “Think you’re ready for me?” Leonard murmured another minute later

            With a breathy whimper, Pavel rolled his ass back onto Leonard’s fingers. “Да! Yes,” he repeated, grasping at what threads of focus he had left when Leonard pressed back, deep. Pavel lost his tenuous grasp on coherency when Leonard curled his fingers against that spot once more despite his earlier promise to play nice. Pavel whined at the loss when Leonard pulled free.

            “Not stopping, Pashenka,” Leonard murmured, smoothing his dry hand over Pavel’s skin in a soothing circle before pressing at his hip. “Just gonna move. C’mon, up you get,” he instructed.

            Pavel sluggishly pieced together enough function to open his eyes and scoot over. He scrambled with a little more vigor when Leonard took his place on the bed and Pavel realized what he wanted. Without waiting for further instruction, Pavel snatched up the vial of oil, tipping it unceremoniously over Leonard’s already dripping cock, smearing the chill liquid with his free hand until it warmed. Leonard’s head fell back as soon as Pavel’s hand was on him, mouth open and throat working without sound as he let himself unselfconsciously enjoy Pavel’s touch.

            Pavel had never seen anything so beautiful in all the cosmos.

            Leonard’s eyes opened when Pavel shifted to straddle his hips, rolling to rub their lengths together, letting the head of Leonard’s dick catch on his rim and yank a gasp out of him. Pavel closed his eyes at how hard Leonard grabbed at his thighs, just holding on rather than trying to control anything. Pavel let out a shaky breath, running his fingers over Leonard’s chest, eyes tracking the wet sheen his oiled hand left, and it was too much only to watch, only to touch.

            Leaning down, he captured Leonard’s lips in a rough kiss, need and desire clashing as Leonard licked over Pavel’s lower lip, his hands both sliding down beneath Pavel’s wiry thighs. Pavel lifted himself up on his knees, one hand braced on Leonard’s chest, the other reaching between them to position Leonard.

            Even their breathing went slow and quiet as Leonard helped lower Pavel down again, not letting him rush this. Pavel wanted to, wanted to shove down and back and take Leonard for everything he was worth, but he let Leonard guide him instead, let himself feel the sparks zinging down the backs of his thighs and the goosebumps pebbling up his spine.

            A broken noise clawed out of his chest and he buried his nose in Leonard’s shoulder, feeling the tremble in Leonard’s grasp answered in the shake of his own body as they lowered Pavel the rest of the way together. He sat for a moment, flush with Leonard’s lap, in utter silence, and suddenly it was just _too much_ for Pavel.

            He _wanted_ this, wanted to stay right where he was forever, full up and wrapped around Leonard all at once, wanted to be allowed to want this beyond the confines of this place. It hit him then that Leonard’s breathing was just as shallow and uneven, and Pavel’s chest tightened with the memory of their earlier conversation.

            _You want to touch me, now._

_Yes._

            Leonard’s hands traced up over the line of Pavel’s thighs, rubbing up to his lower back soothingly before sliding down to grasp and knead at his rounded cheeks, causing Pavel to gasp and jerk forward, lifting up a little. A choked, throaty noise of appreciation rumbled out of Leonard, one hand slipping back to trace a finger along where they were joined. Pavel had to close his eyes, the sensation almost too much, the touch almost too reverent to remember they were not playing for keeps.

            So Pavel sank teeth into the skin high on Leonard’s neck, right under his ear where the bone pressed close, and began to move. A guttural noise punched out of Leonard at the sudden change, that same hand clenching in the meat of Pavel’s backside to aid the movement of Pavel’s body against his own.

            It would not take long, that much Pavel could tell- Leonard had already been so worked up and Pavel could feel the tension in the clutch of Leonard’s hands at his hips, the way he directed Pavel with the press and drag of his palms. He pushed back into every buck of Leonard’s hips, not bothering to be quiet, nails digging into Leonard’s chest, catching on a nipple in a way that made Leonard’s whole body twitch.

            “Pavel, I can’t-“ Leonard rasped brokenly only a minute or two later, eyes shuttering closed the way they had done that morning, and Pavel could practically taste how close he was.

            “Yes, yes, Len please, do it,” Pavel said, back bowing as he curved his body to a new angle, one that let him sink teeth into the pad of Leonard’s pectoral, just under his collarbone.

            Leonard shouted as he came, hips snapping up to drive deep into Pavel, grip tightening to drag him down harder, and Pavel gasped, feeling him twitch and spill inside of him. His own eyes fell shut against his will, honing in on the sensation to memorize every detail, body buzzing with pleasure that was both too much and not nearly enough to let him follow Leonard over the edge.

            It was worth it, he thought as he opened his eyes again, just to see the lax expression on Leonard’s face, the way his features relaxed into something so gentle and happy. Pavel leaned forward, knowing Leonard would be too fuzzy with orgasm to pay attention to the soft kiss he pressed to his cheek. It was perhaps too intimate, despite what they had just done, but he wanted to, and so he did.

            Then he began to lift up on his knees to move away, and Leonard’s hands tightened, keeping him in place. Leonard cracked one eye open again. “Where d’yeh think yer goin’?” he slurred, prying open his other eye with what appeared to be great effort.

            Pavel swallowed at the deep gravel in Leonard’s voice, at just how thick his drawl got when he could not be bothered to rein it in. He stared down at him, wide-eyed and carefully blank. “I was just…” was all he could manage before Leonard released his hip with one hand and moved to grip Pavel’s still-hard dick.

            Leonard stroked over him once before looping a steadying arm around his back as he sat, sliding home further rather than out, making Pavel cry out as Leonard’s not-yet-soft cock brushed over his prostate.

            “I’m not done with you yet, darlin’,” Leonard rasped, watching Pavel from under heavy eyelids with a sure grin and surer grip.

            Not bothering to resist, Pavel pulled Leonard’s mouth back to his neck and pressed his own lips together to keep from begging him never to be done with him. Minutes later, he came like that a second time, Leonard still inside of him and leaving marks where Pavel had once told him not to go.

            He never wanted him to leave.

            Leonard licked over the tendon in Pavel’s neck one last time once the aftershocks had stopped and then gently laid Pavel back down, angling his hips to slip from him with a muffled grunt. Pavel bit back his noise of loss, though apparently not well if the look Leonard gave him was any indication.

            “I’ll be back,” Leonard assured him, kissing just at the corner of his eye. “Just going to get something to clean up with. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

            “I’ll thank you sooner, if you give me a little while,” Pavel said cheekily, even though he was not sure he actually could. Achieving anything more than the bare minimum of consciousness was currently questionable.

            Leonard just laughed and crossed the room to the bath. Pavel accepted the warm, wet cloth when Leonard returned, swiping it sleepily over where he was messiest. He surrendered when Leonard took the cloth away from him and started running it over his rapidly cooling skin for him instead. _A little while_ , Pavel thought tiredly, was most definitely an understatement.

            “I cannot move,” he slurred when he felt the bed dip as Leonard rejoined him some time later. He could not remember Leonard leaving.

            His words were met with a deep chuckle as Leonard somehow magically pulled the blankets from under Pavel in order to fluff them back out over them both. He loved that chuckle. He loved Leonard. He loved the warm pressure of Leonard’s arm snaking under his neck and tucking his body closer to Leonard’s larger, warmer one. Pavel moaned appreciatively and snuggled closer, his ear on Leonard’s chest just to hear the steady thump-thump of his heart.

            “Stay,” Pavel mumbled muzzily, stifling a yawn. Sleep was coming for him fast, and he was powerless to stop it, but he needed Leonard to stay. Maybe forever. Maybe just for now, or for as long as they could. “Just like this. Until we go home.”

            Leonard’s heart sped up a little beneath Pavel’s ear, but if he said anything in response, Pavel fell asleep too quickly to hear it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to EvilConcubine for patiently learning me some Russian words and phrases!
> 
> Also, I am EXTREMELY sorry this has taken 2 months to get to you lovely, patient, wonderful folks. I got very extremely sick in February for almost 2 weeks and didn't get back to writing speed until about a week ago, but I swear to you, I am back to working on it now! Thank you to those who sent encouragement while I was away, it really helped <3
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I hope even more that you've gotten terribly suspicious of just what exactly is going on around here... ;)


	14. The Reveal

  

            With hours until they had to even open their eyes, Leonard laid awake cataloging all of his aching, well-used muscles. Though he hadn’t been far behind Pavel in sleep last night, he had woken after only a few hours to the soft, blue light of the lichen glowing around the room earlier than it should. Pavel seemed undisturbed by the unusual light, sacked out so hard it probably didn’t even register, so Leonard did not wake him.

            Instead, he chose to use the opportunity to trace his gaze over every sleek line of Pavel’s body where he sprawled naked beside Leonard. At some point, Pavel had thrown an ankle over one of Leonard’s, like some kind of compromise between still touching him and escaping the furnace Leonard usually became at night. The simple, unconscious action reached right down into Leonard’s heart and squeezed.

            Of everything they could do or have between them, _this_ was what he actually wanted- the warmth of having someone so openly comfortable around him, knowing that even in sleep, Pavel wanted to be in contact. It had been a long time since he’d let anyone new this close, and yet he found that – despite how he knew this would eventually go – he had no regrets. Only wishes.

            Unfortunately, there was not, to Leonard’s knowledge, a method to freeze time, no matter how hard he wished. But having Pavel so peaceful and close made Leonard think that perhaps simply basking in the present, in the soft sound of Pavel breathing and the pulse of his heart under Leonard’s fingertips, came in a close second. There would be more moments like this; the month he had worried so much about that first day seemed far more like a blessing now.

            In fact a month, he thought wryly, was far too short a time to have this.

            _Until we go home_.

            He let out a soft sigh at the memory of Pavel’s words, mumbled from the place where dreams began. Even there, Pavel had been aware this was all temporary. Even with his inhibitions undoubtedly running their lowest, even pleasurably wrung out and on the cusp of sleep, Pavel had made it clear he expected this would not last beyond going home.

            Leonard closed his eyes again, just long enough to let his exhaustion drag enticingly at his consciousness. Some part of him knew he should just go back to sleep, forget that there was an ending at all, forget that they ever had to go home. He wanted to just get lost in this, whatever _this_ was, until it fell apart around him. The Enterprise would come back someday, and Pavel would call it quits, and Leonard was pretty sure he wouldn’t even have all the pieces anymore to put himself back together, but in this one single moment, he just didn’t care.

            He rubbed his thumb over the sleep-warm skin of Pavel’s arm, and dragged his eyes open again just to see him. As soon as he did, he noticed that the lichen had begun to change color from blue to green, in a trail leading to the door. All around the frame, the lichen had changed colors, and from somewhere in the depths of his exhaustion-fogged memory, Leonard managed to recall that meant someone was waiting outside.

            Since Omaru weren’t due to pick them up for quite a while yet, Leonard figured the only reason anyone would visit them at this hour involved an emergency. With reluctance, he lifted his fingers away from the crook of Pavel’s arm and extracted his foot from Pavel’s so that he could roll out of their bed.

            Their bed. He smiled, despite the sharp lance of pain the thought brought with it, and decided that there would definitely be regrets later, after all.

            Pulling his thoughts back to the problem at hand, he grabbed up the nearest bits of clothing and struggled into enough of them to be able to answer the door. The chemical device sat on the table and he fiddled with it until it showed the symbol for opening doors. Tapping it against the wall, he watched the doorway begin to sift and rasp open, barely a whisper even in the dead silence. He glanced back to see it didn’t wake Pavel, and when he turned back, he found Oma standing just across the threshold, an odd blue-grey color as they clasped and unclasped their hands.

            “Oma?” Leonard said quietly.

            They leaned to look around Leonard, to see Pavel still asleep in the bed, and then made a small, soft trill, barely a sound at all. “May I speak with you alone?”

            The word _alone_ grated over Leonard’s awareness, and he realized that Oma really was _alone_. “Where’s Aru?” he demanded, a little louder than he’d intended, worried that Oma might be risking pain or worse to come here. Telk were _never_ without their partners, and Oma’s was nowhere in sight.

            Oma made a soft, low, unpleasant noise and glanced past Leonard to Pavel again. “Aru is asleep still. I wished to speak to you alone.”

            At the strange tone, the odd choice of such normal words, the hairs on Leonard’s arms rose, the same way as they had down in the reservoir. Oma’s speech was always better than the others they had interacted with while down on the planet, but this was different. Now their Standard sounded fluent and smooth, as though they had spoken it all their lives. Coupled with Aru’s absence, the switch made him want to step back into the room and refuse to leave Pavel alone. It made him want to bolt, to escape.

            Instead, he stepped into the hallway and let the door sift closed behind him. Since he still held the building device, Pavel would not be able to leave until he returned.

            “What is it?” he asked, leaning back against the door, still blocking it.

            “We cannot speak here,” Oma said, tentacle fingers twining and untwining nervously. “I cannot be seen without Aru.”

            Leonard’s heart skipped a beat, and he swallowed against the harsh feeling. That was it. Something was _wrong_. Something had _gone_ wrong. If Oma was here without Aru, if Oma was risking coming here without Aru in both chemical and social terms, there was almost certainly trouble. Leonard could only think that Aru had decided not to keep their secret any longer.

            He pushed away from the door, already going over escape plans in his head. “Lead the way,” he told Oma softly. If Oma was here, ready to go against even Aru, then the least Leonard could do was trust them.

            Oma relaxed fractionally at his compliance, and began to move swiftly down the hall. Leonard followed, keeping his steps light and quiet the way Jim had shown him in their early friendship, the sort of quiet that would not wake a barely sleeping roommate. Luckily they did not go far, Oma sifting open a door just down the hall and ducking inside. Leonard followed, realizing as he entered that it appeared to be a storage area, boxes and shelves stacked in neat piles that left them very little space.

            “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately, and Oma made a little gesture that Leonard almost didn’t recognize without the accompanying yellow color of confusion. In fact, Leonard realized, Oma hadn’t changed from the neutral grey-blue they’d worn at his door. “Are we in danger?”

            “Danger?” they echoed. “No, you are not, but I- I need your help.”

            “My help?” Leonard asked, pulling up short. “With what?”

            There was that little noise of distress again, though Oma curbed it quickly. They stood uncertainly for another tense moment, tentacle fingers twining and writhing, and then they let out a heavy breath through their chest openings. “I had hoped to have another day or two before having to ask, and Aru wanted to wait until you go, but I cannot. Our people are in too much danger. We need your help to leave this planet.”

            The entirely unexpected request crashed Leonard’s train of thought, enough that he merely stood there staring blankly, trying to parse what Oma had just asked. It made no sense; the Telk were the most advanced species on the planet, and as far as Leonard understood it, were at peace with the other two peoples in the local star system. Aside from the storm currently raging above ground, which they all seemed to have a pretty good handle on, he knew of nothing which could threaten the Telk here.

            “Escape the planet?” he echoed, confused. “What’s so dangerous?”

            “The Telk,” Oma told him, sounding confused and a little exasperated, though their color still stayed oddly frozen. Something ticked at the back of Leonard’s mind, urgent and insistent and still fuzzy through sex and sleep. “Amanda and Jacob assured us that when their Federation returned, they would almost certainly send someone from Starfleet, and that the humans aboard a Starfleet vessel would want to help us. I was uncertain this would be true, at first, but when we initially told you about our people, you were angry at how we had been treated. Later, when we showed ourselves to you and to Pavel, you-

            “Woah, woah, now just hold on a damn minute,” Leonard said, splaying both hands in the air to stop Oma, his mind racing. He felt like he had missed five minutes of vital conversation somewhere, and he wasn’t sure he liked how his mind was filling in the gaps. “What’re you… I’m afraid I don’t get what’s goin’ on just now. You’re saying the Telk are…?”

            “They want us dead,” Oma said slowly, watching him carefully.

            “You and Aru?” Leonard said, to clarify, trying to figure out what exactly the two could have done that stretched back to before his own arrival to the planet, something that went all the way back to First Contact. Yewhara had told him these two had not been easily accepted into the colony- maybe Leonard should have asked more questions about that.

            “Yes,” Oma agreed, still tense, still grey-blue in an eerily still sort of way. “And all others like us.”

            “Others like you?” Leonard echoed, belly sinking. He realized he could fill in this blank, after all. He knew what Oma’s next words were, even as they said them.

            “The white Telk,” Oma said, lowering their voice, and their colors dropped away to a pearly, iridescent white as though they had just remembered to change them.           

            Leonard would later be sure that he had stopped breathing, and that the only thing he could hear for a moment was the sound of his own heart. All he processed now, however, was the pale, clean white of Oma’s skin and the devastating crash of pieces falling into place.

            The careful way they had spoken about the white Telk, and nervously warned Leonard and Pavel when they had done something strange. The distrust Yewhara had shown of them in private, and the story they had told about finding them apart from the colony.

            The way that, sometimes, Oma seemed to change colors as an afterthought, off-beat with Aru in a way he hadn’t seen in any of the others. The way they disagreed, in language and in colors, changing at different rates or even changing completely separate colors until one of them joined the other, almost an afterthought. _Actually_ an afterthought, Leonard realized.

            Down in the reservoir, the bioluminescence reflecting off their pale, pale skin as Oma asked if they could be trusted not to speak of what they had seen.

            “You tried to tell us,” he breathed, unable to focus. He had been so worried about his own life that he hadn’t even noticed them risking theirs. “Down in the reservoir. That’s why you took us down there.”

            “Yes,” Oma said simply, holding still a little too rigidly to look comfortable. “We showed you.”

            “We didn’t see,” Leonard said, wondering if Telk eyes saw differently than human eyes, if they were able to filter the light either mechanically or by mental interpretation in order to see true colors regardless of the environment. “The light of the plants made you look blue. We didn’t realize…”

            “Ah,” Oma said, relaxing fractionally. Both of them were quiet for a moment, and then Oma added: “That does explain why you only asked about the plants.”

            Leonard couldn’t help the short, sharp bark of laughter at the observation, and he was not sure which of them it startled more. “Sorry,” he said quickly, quietly. “This is just… a lot.”

            “I admit this is closer to the reaction we had expected previously,” Oma told him, relaxing more now. “You really did not know?”

            “How could we?” Leonard asked. “I mean, you showed us, but humans don’t see well in that kind of low light, and anyway, you told us there weren’t any white Telk because you…” He trailed off, feeling a little ill at his next words even before speaking them. “But you don’t kill them, do you.”

            “No,” Oma agreed, and it still felt strange to see them stay a steady, unchanging color. “What we told you on your first night here, about culling the children, we told you so that you would understand your predicament. We ought to have been more transparent sooner, but Aru was still afraid you could not be trusted. We have been through so much already, it seemed safer to simply protect you until we knew more. We did not expect your reaction to be so…”

            Leonard thought back to how he had felt like tearing the place apart when he learned – when he _thought_ he learned – that they had killed children. He had barely kept his voice down. “Yeah,” he said, dropping his eyes a little. “I understand why you couldn’t, but I wish you’d told us. We could have been working on a plan this whole time.”

            “Yes,” Oma said, deflating a bit. “I told Aru that, from the beginning. But Aru is scared. They remember what we had to do to survive.”

            “How did you?” Leonard asked softly. He knew he was prying, but they were alone and there was a good chance whatever story they could tell him now, it would help him convince Jim and, later, Starfleet and the Federation to help these people. “If white Telk are culled when they’re born, how’d you make it out alive?”

            “They are not culled everywhere,” Oma said, voice tight, though the burnt-yellow color Leonard realized he expected to see never actually surfaced. It felt odd to be so familiar with something so alien. “To the East there is a great forest, and beyond that, an ocean. Beyond that, there are more Telk. They live in smaller communities than here, and only come to our gatherings every other cycle.  This produces more white Telk than usual.”

            “I think perhaps a long time ago, the Riiya Telk did used to kill us when we hatched,” Oma continued. “But when it kept happening, I think that their isolation got the better of them. There was no one else over there to tell them no. They started… _experimenting_ on them.” Oma spat the word like it had a bad taste, and for all Leonard knew, it did. He knew he felt sick enough to hear them say it.

            “On you,” he concluded.

            “Yes,” they agreed. “And on Aru, and every other person like us. We were held captive against our will, and since we could not produce the correct chemicals to control the structures, there was little we could do.”

            “Then how did you end up here?” Leonard asked, afraid he did not want to know the answer. Oma had told him that the white Telk were a threat to the community, that they had once upon a time hurt people.

            Oma gestured, and Leonard found he missed the streaks of color that would have appeared. “Contrary to what you might have been told as an alien, the Telk are not entirely united. The colonies each have different ways of doing things, and there are differences of opinion within each colony as well. A pair of young Telk in Riiya released us, and helped us to escape to the wild.”

            “And you crossed the water, to come here,” Leonard said, remembering that Yewhara had said they’d found the pair. “But, you change colors. You produce chemicals, and read them.”

            Nodding, Oma turned their wrist over so that Leonard could see the underside. A pale mark ran from the base of their palm to a quarter of the way down their forearm, barely noticeable unless he was looking for it. “In an attempt to make us more like them, the Riiya built very crude technology that can request and produce simple chemicals based on what is in our bodies already. We have improved upon it greatly. It is… enough to pass.”

            “And the colors?” Leonard asked, reaching out to more closely examine the old incision. It had been re-made at some point, a scar layered over a scar, maybe to update the technology. He ran his thumb over it, but he could not feel whatever was underneath; whatever it was, it was cleverly designed and crafted.

            “That was easier,” Oma said, watching him examine their wrist. “Our colors are always on. All of them. We just have to shut off the ones we do not want. It is the opposite of grey Telk, but an otherwise harmless mutation. Just… a visual indicator of being different. Once we learned how to control it, it was easier to fit in, and to protect others when we found them.”

            “Others,” Leonard echoed. Of course there were others. The white Telk Omaru supposedly killed… of course they had not. Which meant- “There are others like you here, hiding in plain sight.”

            “Yes,” Oma agreed again, sounding relieved that he was finally getting the scope of the situation. “You have met Filgop, but there are six other pairs. They are not bonded like the grey Telk- if they separated, it would not kill them. But, we stay in pairs to avoid being caught. Aru and I work in medical so that we have access to the hatchlings, and can pair them off when there are two.”

            Leonard shook his head, trying to process all of this. It was… a lot. He could hardly imagine what they had to have gone through to get where they were now, or how much courage it had taken to say something to him, to reveal themselves and ask for help. Unfortunately, he wasn’t high on the list of people able to actually do a damn thing about it, beyond possibly asking Jim to grant asylum for a group aboard the Enterprise.

            “You want me to get you off this rock, but, Oma, I can’t- I don’t have the authority to help you,” he admitted. If nothing else, he could be up front about his helplessness. “I can ask my captain if there is anything he can do, but there’s very little chance anything goes down without the Federation talking to your leadership-“

            “They cannot!” Oma said loudly, distressed. “If your Federation refuses to help, we will be exposed and stuck here. Please,” they said softly. “We do not need to escape to your Federation; if your captain will simply take us someplace else, anywhere else that is habitable, it will be enough. Will you ask him this tomorrow?”

            “I can’t ask him tomorrow,” Leonard said, holding up his hands to calm Oma. “But when he gets back-“

            “He will return tomorrow,” Oma interrupted. “That is why I had to ask you tonight. Your ship has just communicated to our command center that they will be here late tomorrow. The storm should be clearing by then, and this means you will go home, correct?”

            “No…” Leonard said, uncertain now. Jim had said they’d be back in less than two weeks, and with the longer Telk days, it was getting close enough, but the storm outside… “Now hang on a minute. Hara said the storm was going to last a month.”

            Oma tilted a little, confused. “Whose month?” they asked.

            Leonard blinked. “Whose…?”

            “A Federation month or a Telk month?” Oma clarified, and Leonard’s belly sank. Of course the times were different. Of course they were. “Our storms do not usually last more than one of our months. Less than half of one Federation month.”

            Leonard couldn’t remember if that had been in the report. He couldn’t hold onto any thoughts at all beyond the ringing in his ears. He had thought he’d had more time. He needed more time. “They’re going to be here tomorrow,” he said hollowly. “We’re going home.”

            “Yes,” Oma said gently, obviously realizing something was happening, even if they could not know what. “That is why I needed to ask for your help now. I did not want to disturb your sleep, but there is no more time.”

            His mind just whirred uselessly in a tight circle. No time, no time, no more time. Geezus. He had no idea how he was going to break the news to Pavel. “Yeah. I’ll…” He trailed off, swallowing hard and trying to pull himself together. “I’ll talk to Jim, when we get back. He’ll know… he’ll do something. He’ll do whatever he can to help you, I’m sure of that.”

            Oma made a small noise of relief, and reached out to touch his arm briefly, tentacle fingers soft and dry. “Are you ok?” they asked.

            Leonard forced a smile he didn’t feel, realizing that Oma might actually not be able to tell he was not being truthful about it. “I’m fine,” he lied as he pressed his chemical device to the wall to open the door. “I just didn’t expect to be goin’ home so quick, is all. Haven’t gotten to see everything here.”

            Pink and purple swirled slowly across Oma’s skin, an obvious and pointed copy of Leonard’s own forced smile now that they were exposed to the public hallway again. “Then we will show you more things in the morning,” they told him solemnly. “There is at least one place you deserve to see before you leave. Maybe it will help you to help us.”

            “Sounds good,” Leonard said, surprised to find that despite his current mental tailspin, it was the truth. Oma needed help, and if Leonard had ever been good at anything, it was helping people in need. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna go back to my room now,” he told them, motioning to the open doorway. “Talk to Pavel about all of this before we go home.”

            As Leonard moved to leave, Oma reached out and touched his arm again with the tips of their soft fingers, just enough to get his attention. He stopped, turning to look back in question. Oma made a fluttery noise Leonard had never heard before, blue swirling with tendrils of yellow.

            “You should tell him,” Oma said softly, meeting his eyes. “You said humans use words to tell each other how they feel. Tell him your words.”

            Leonard stared back, mouth open but mind empty of any kind of response to Oma’s request. He could not explain to Oma that there was no way he could do what they asked, no way he could just tell Pavel he’d been a damn fool and fallen in love. Pavel had made it clear that his only concern was whether or not they’d be in trouble with Jim- or rather the regulations Jim had an obligation to enforce. That what they had here would not continue later. That it was only temporary.

            _Until we go home_.

            Leonard swallowed his aching heart, and just nodded. “I’ll talk to him,” he said, hoping Oma could not hear how hollow it sounded.

 

* * *

 

            Leonard watched the door sift closed beneath the gentle touch of the chemical device, the sound like pouring sand into the silence of the room. Pavel hadn’t moved at all from where Leonard had left him, which only made Leonard’s heart ache more to see. He wanted to keep this. He wanted more time.

            Instead, he padded to his own side of the bed and sat on the edge for a few long minutes, just letting time exist around him, mind blank. It was only when he heard the whisper of blankets behind him that his brain kicked into gear again and he realized that he really was going to have to do this. He really was going to have to tell Pavel they were going home, and that would be that.

            He turned and laid down on his side, pillowing his head on his folded arm just as Pavel blinked sleepy eyes open. Pavel glanced first at Leonard, and then to the closed doorway, then back to Leonard as if trying to piece together why Leonard had been sitting around fully dressed. It did not take him long to come to the correct conclusion.

            “Where did you go?” Pavel asked, voice muzzy and graveled with sleep, the sound settling heavy in Leonard’s tight chest. He gave a huge yawn and did not bother to open his eyes again at the end.

            He traced his gaze over Pavel’s supine form, trying to decide how to break the news, trying to hold onto the last moments of this mistake. He wanted, with everything he had, to lean forward, to close the small space between them to kiss Pavel one last time, but there would be no excuse for it now. He wished he had done it before leaving with Oma. He let out a sigh, barely a breath.

            “Oma came by,” Leonard said quietly, not wanting to break the silence, watching Pavel’s reaction closely. “Jim contacted Yewhara.” Pavel tensed a little, jaw ticking as he clenched it, and Leonard regretted bringing up Jim’s name again so soon, even though it provided a little distance to do so. They were going home. “Guess they’re gonna be in tomorrow after the storm ends, to pick us up.”

            Pavel let out a sigh Leonard couldn’t interpret and slung an arm over his eyes, body going limp. “Okay,” he said, tone so neutral Leonard knew it was forced.

            He did not, however, seem surprised to hear their time here had just been halved. Leonard’s brow furrowed. He’d expected _some_ thing- if nothing else, Leonard had thought Pavel wanted to go home enough that the news should be a relief.

            “Sooner’n I figured we’d be getting out of here,” he said carefully, trying not to give away his own disappointment.

            “Only by a day or two,” Pavel mumbled, and then stiffened, and suddenly Leonard understood what was going on.

            “You knew,” he said softly.

            _A month is not that long_.

            All the times Leonard had talked about being here for an entire month, and Pavel had not answered, or had changed the subject. The way that Pavel had made moves much faster than Leonard, apparently working on a different time line. How Pavel had spoken often about going home but never about the extended duration of their stay.

            _Until we go home_.

            “You knew we weren’t going to be here a month,” Leonard repeated. “Not a Standard one anyway.”

            “Yes,” Pavel answered, moving his arm but not turning to look at Leonard.

            “From the start?” Leonard asked. “Before…”

            “Yes,” Pavel said again, and Leonard could see the guilt now, and that didn’t help anything at all.

            “And you knew I didn’t,” he concluded, and he could feel the heat of anger in his belly at being kept in the dark. If he had known… “Why didn’t you say anything? None of this- we could have just… I wouldn’t have-”

            He sat up, turning around as he tamped down on the panic churning around inside of him now. They could have survived this long without crossing nearly as many boundaries. They could have made a better plan, one that was not always going to leave McCoy’s heart ruined again. They could have done _anything_ that would have made going home easier, not harder.

            “I’m sorry,” Pavel said, voice rough. He sat up as well, half turned toward McCoy. “I did not think it would matter.”

            “You did,” McCoy said, hotly now. “Or you’d’ve said something.”

            “Why?” Chekov asked, turning to look at him openly now, searching his eyes for something McCoy couldn’t guess. “Knowing then or knowing now… why would it matter?”

            McCoy’s chest felt too tight to breathe. It mattered. Of _course_ it mattered; he wouldn’t have let himself get this involved, this invested. He had thought they had time. He had thought _he_ had time, to explain himself, to find a way to ask if Chekov would consider something more than just sex.

            But his feelings were his own problem, not Chekov’s. It was clear as day that if Chekov thought it didn’t matter at what point they went home, that _more_ had never really been an option. McCoy had already given too much away to take it back, though, enough that Chekov was calling him on it, had already guessed why it mattered to McCoy and wanted to talk about it. McCoy just… couldn’t. Not right now, not with everything else that had happened in the last half hour closing in on him as well.

            The tightness in his chest coiled into a sick feeling, and he shook his head, shoving himself gently to his feet. He needed out.

            “You know why,” he said, and it came out more accusatory than he wanted, so he took a breath and tried again. “You know exactly why,” he repeated, softer, almost a plea. “And I just… can’t- I’m just- I’m gonna go to Command and see if I can get hold of Jim, myself.”

            He didn’t miss the little flinch Chekov gave. “I’m sorry-” Chekov started, and the sympathy in his tone was more than McCoy could handle.

            “Don’t,” he said firmly. “Don’t apologize. Not for this… situation. Just… I’ll see you at the lab later. Okay?”

            Chekov stared at him a moment longer, but then he nodded, shoulders slumping a little. “Okay,” he agreed.

            McCoy let out a breath, relief that Chekov wasn’t going to push the issue siphoning off some of his stress. He nodded and took a step back from the bed, put space between them. It hurt, to walk away when all he had wanted for days, for years if he was honest, was to get closer… but it was for the best. A little time, a little distance, and maybe he could pull himself together enough to salvage their work relationship.

            So he took another step, and another, and another, until he was at the door. It shifted open to his gentle touch, and he tossed the chemical device onto the foot of the bed before disappearing down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back after some real world losses of life, and a vacation from Real Life that I desperately needed. I waited to post this one until I had the next one ready, too, so that you amazing folks won't have to wait too long! Looking forward to hearing from you <3


	15. The Revelation

 

 

            McCoy waved his hand over the plants in front of him for the hundredth time, watching the wash of red and brown and yellow that trailed after the motion. He didn’t think plants could actually be _angry_ , but if they could, these ones were. He had left Pavel’s translation software back in the room on his PADD, and hadn’t been able to swallow enough pride to go back to fetch it. Not that it mattered; between going to try to talk to Jim from the Telk command office earlier and annoying the plants in front of him, he’d wasted enough time that Omaru should arrive soon.

            _You shouldn’t have stranded us here, Jim_.

            His own words from his comm call to Jim rattled around in his head, accusation and regret wrapped up so closely he could hardly tell the difference anymore. Even Jim had had the good sense to look chastised when he’d said it.

            _We couldn’t have done anything different, Bones. I’m sorry._

            Sorry didn’t quite cut it, and he imagined he would have some choice words for Jim later. For now, he just kept flipping the words over and over in his head. ‘Couldn’t have done anything different’ turned out to be a pretty apt description of his own situation. Or maybe just _wouldn’t_ have done anything different fit better. After all, he had wanted what Chekov offered. Wanted more. Maybe the extra time wouldn’t really have made a difference anyway. It wouldn’t have turned out differently enough to hold a grudge.

            He sighed.

            Across the room, the door to the lab opened as if it had heard him. Leonard looked up, steeling himself for another confrontation, but it was only Omaru, talking softly in shifting colors and gestures. Oma caught sight of him first and froze, and Leonard knew without asking that they could tell something was wrong. Aru trailed to a stop between them, looking back and forth.

            “You told him,” Oma said quietly.

            “He guessed,” Leonard said. Close enough. Even as he said it, though, he realized all that he had _not_ told Chekov. He sighed again and scrubbed at the back of his head with one hand. “Told him we were goin’ home, but I didn’t get a chance to tell him about… all of you.”

            Oma and Aru both swirled with pale yellow, but Oma merely gave a gesture reminiscent of a nod. “Will you?”

            “Yeah, of course,” he said quickly, doing his best to sound reassuring. He had meant to tell Chekov everything in the first place, and he would need to do so before they went home. If nothing else, the information would be an olive branch now. “I meant to tell him, and I know he’ll want to help. Just didn’t get around to it after the rest.”

            They both cleared to smooth green colors, and Oma nodded again. “May we bring him here?”

            McCoy smiled a little guiltily, but shook his head. “You had somewhere you wanted to take us today, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I think maybe I’d better talk to him before that. Alone.”

            “Agree,” Oma said softly, lighting up purple when he looked at them in confusion. He rolled his eyes- they were teasing him. “We will wait for you here.”

            McCoy clambered to his feet. He sure as hell didn’t want to go back to the room and talk to Pavel about any of this, but there were bigger problems at hand than the two of them. Bigger problems than a few stray human emotions, anyway, and if nothing else, he could use a change into actual clothing. So he gave Omaru the Telk gesture for farewell, and beat a hasty retreat out of the med labs.

 

* * *

 

            Chekov answered the door fully dressed in his ‘fleet clothes, still rubbing one of the towels over his curls to dry them. The instant he realized Leonard was standing there, had come back, he froze. McCoy expected surprise, but he did not anticipate the guilty way Chekov dropped his eyes and moved out of the way to let him in. McCoy hated it.

            “I’m sorry,” he said, as soon as he was through the door, and _that_ got Chekov’s attention. McCoy held his gaze as he spoke. “I was an asshole, earlier. It doesn’t matter.” He had thought of a thousand apologies, but owning up to the truth seemed like the only worthwhile way. “Whether you told me or not… I’d’ve done the same thing. It doesn’t matter.”

            And that was it, at the end of the day. Chekov had offered him a faster route to what he wanted, but it _was_ what he had wanted, in some way. If McCoy had known they only had ten days, he still would have kissed Pavel back. He would still have touched when Pavel asked him to. He would still be ass over teakettle for the other man, and he’d still have landed square where he was in the middle of this mess.

            Pavel looked right back at him, guilt and hurt still bright in his eyes, and then he straightened, letting out a sigh of surrender. “I am sorry, too. I should have made sure you understood our situation.”

            McCoy was only _pretty_ sure he didn’t flinch at that. “It’s fine,” he said quickly, dismissing the whole thing with a wave of his hand. “Just a- a misunderstanding, is all. Nothing worth getting upset over, not when we got more important things to worry about.”

            “More important things?” Pavel echoed, moving away from him and heading toward the bathing area. He tossed his damp towel over the wall to dry. “What things?”

            Leonard felt a little guilty at the question; here he was, having gotten angry with Pavel over something he probably should have known on his own anyway, and he’d gone and kept the biggest secret on the entire planet. Literally. He blew out a breath and moved to take a seat on the edge of the bed.

            “I told you we’re goin’ home tomorrow,” he said slowly. “Well, Oma came to tell me, because they wanted my help. Our help, really. To get off the planet.”

            “Why?” Pavel asked, sitting against the short wall and folding his arms over his chest, clearly establishing a professional distance between them again. Leonard was going to pretend that didn’t hurt, because he knew it was necessary.

            “Because _apparently_ they told us a big damn secret down in that reservoir that had nothin’ to do with us,” he said, hoping it didn’t sound like he was irritated with Pavel. “Oma and Aru are white Telk.”

            Pavel gave a small squawk of surprise, a sound that Leonard was not sure he had ever heard an actual human being make as his arms unfolded gracelessly. “What?!” But Pavel’s brain was faster than Leonard’s words could ever have been as he processed everything the same way Leonard had earlier. “In the cavern… the light…? Oh. Oh, Doctor, we have made a mistake.”

            Leonard had never hated hearing his professional title as much as he did in that moment. “Something like that,” he agreed, more dully than he’d intended. “They want our help getting off the planet, and takin’ the rest of the white Telk with them. Including your buddies, Filgop.”

            “No… Filgop…?” Pavel breathed, eyes wide, then: “It does… make some sense.” He straightened, shifting into business mode. “What are we going to do? Did you tell the Captain? We are not authorized to take refugees…”

            “I know,” Leonard said, waving his hand. “I didn’t get to tell Jim, but we’ll be home tonight and I can catch him in private. He won’t want to leave anyone to their death any more than we do.”

            With a rough noise at the back of his throat, Pavel pushed himself up from the ledge. “We should find Omaru,” he said, not looking at Leonard.

            “Yeah,” Leonard said, then cleared his throat. Back to business for real, then. He tamped down on the ache in his chest. “Oma wants to show us someplace new today. Said it would help us help them.”

            “Then we shall see it,” Pavel said, heading for the door.

            Leonard clambered back to his feet and followed the edge of the bed to where his own uniform laid folded neatly on the table. “I’m just gonna change real quick,” he said as he pulled the bundle of clothing close and glanced over his shoulder.

            “I will wait outside,” Pavel said politely, the door shifting open at his touch.

            Turning back, Leonard sighed. He slipped out of the loose Telk garments easily, hanging them over the back of one of the chairs they had crafted that first day. He hadn’t put his boots on when he left that morning, or when he’d stormed off after coming back, so he just pulled on his pants and shook out the folded shirt.

            Something clattered to the floor near his bare feet, and it took him a moment to locate the little metal delta. For a second he just stared at it, fingers curled too tightly in his shirt, mind curiously blank. Slowly, he set the shirt on the table and bent to retrieve the insignia. It lay cool and innocuous in his open palm. Pavel must have returned it at some point without Leonard noticing.

            _I will find a way to fix what hurts you._

            For a few seconds, all he could think about were Pavel’s soft words, the brightness in his eyes, the complete confidence with which he had promised to heal Leonard. Despite their current situation, Leonard found a gentle smile curling one corner of his lips.

            _We must be very good friends._

            He set the insignia on the table, and tugged his shirt on.

            _I’d be a fool to argue._

            He could be friends. He just needed to pull himself together, stop acting like a wounded animal. They would be fine. _He_ would be fine. At least, that is what he told himself as he clipped the medical insignia back where it belonged.

 

* * *

 

            Omaru drew to a stop outside of an archway of rock, and that in itself was unusual enough to cause McCoy to stare. Very few doorways remained open continuously, usually just the common area doors where so many Telk went in and out at any time that opening and closing the door would have been a hassle. Here, though, there was no foot traffic- like the pathway to the bioluminescent garden, the hallway that had lead them here had been completely empty. Even beyond the arch, McCoy could hear no movement, just a soft, pleasant thrumming sound.

            Aru turned to them. “This place has never been for visitors, even from other colonies,” they said carefully. “But, things must change if we wish to save our people.”

            Moving closer, Oma leaned against Aru’s arm. “This is our siita. It is where Telk bring their eggs. These ones have set already and will hatch together in another three or four months. They are learning, inside of their shells; everything they hear and see and feel, they will learn and they will share among themselves. Every Telk from the colony will come here when they can, to watch over the eggs, and to tell them knowledge.”

            “You can speak to them before they hatch?” McCoy asked.

            “Yes,” Oma said, shifting purple. “It is… not the same as genetic memory, though we have some of that as well. It helps our communities to remain closely bonded. Our children know us, and know we are eager to have them among us.” They paused, looking to Aru as if uncertain how much more to say.

            Soft yellow and orange swirled in Aru’s colors for a moment, before a resigned breath fluttered at their chest openings. “This place ensures that our children are born into love,” they said quietly. “They leave their shells knowing what to expect on the other side. This is… what makes it difficult for those like us. They expect to be met with love and acceptance, as that is all they knew inside the shell. Instead, they receive revulsion and hostility because they are different.”

            “Why do you not take them away before they hatch?” Chekov asked. “Surely you could develop technology to determine what is inside of your eggs…”

            “No,” Aru said, the yellow brightening a little in distress. “Inside, they are the same. All of the children hatch with no colors. In the first hour or two after hatching, the black fades to grey. In some, this fade does not stop until they are white.”

            McCoy shared a look with Chekov before looking back to Aru. “Genetic scans?” Surely if the white Telk were so different, there would be some kind of gene to look for.

            Aru and Oma both gave a little jiggle that looked like shaking their heads no. “We attempted this, but the eggs are very sensitive. We… _damaged_ them. Only one hatched, and it died shortly after. We did not try again.”

            Chekov reached out to touch Oma’s arm in sympathy, shooting McCoy another look of concern. If there was no way to tell the difference, and if even trying to check could kill the Telk, then they really were in need of escape. McCoy couldn’t even imagine how terrible it must have been for these two, and those they were protecting, to have survived to this point.

            “Will it be okay?” he asked gently. “Us going in there? We don’t have to, if it’ll mess anything up.”

            Omaru shared a look, colors swirling rapidly, and then Oma cleared to pale, calm blue. “This, you must decide,” they said. “We wanted to tell you this knowledge, so that you will understand. Once we enter the siita, they will learn you, as they learn us. Everything you say, all of your scents and actions. Everything you feel.”

            “We do not think you will damage them,” Aru said gently. “But you _will_ influence them. You will change them. None of us may know how, but… considering the alliance our people have made with your Federation, perhaps it will help them to know your people through you.”

            McCoy let out a shaky breath, looking to Chekov again. Everything they felt, right now, might not be the best first impression they could ever give to children in such a delicate stage of life. But he remembered how gentle Pavel had been with the young Telk, and he remembered all of the hope and wonder he had felt holding Jo in his arms the first time.

            When he glanced over, Pavel smiled tentatively. Leonard hesitated. So much had happened so fast today, but if they were going to be sharing themselves in some capacity with the unborn Telk, this was what he wanted to share- fondness, connection, happiness. He smiled back, relaxing a little. He could keep a lid on everything else and pretend a little longer.

            “I think that sounds good,” Leonard said, dragging his gaze away from Pavel to smile at Omaru.

            Both Telk turned a shade of pleased pink-purple, and without further hesitation they moved through the doorway. It gave a soft shimmer as they passed through it, some kind of shielding. Leonard reached out to touch it, but felt only a warm, pleasant tingle. The hum changed, and Leonard realized the sound might be coming from the shield, not from whatever laid beyond it.

            Passing into the siita was very much like coming up from underwater. The air was lighter, easier to breathe, sound became crystal clear - despite not having been muffled previously - and all of the colors from the cavern brightened impossibly. The dark walls from the rest of the complex turned tan and white, covered in a thick, soft moss that glowed in ever-shifting rainbows.

            Pillars laced the room in random patterns, carefully tended despite that they looked as if they had formed naturally. Indents at their bases created small bowls, in which sat marbled eggs just as colorful as the rest of the cavern. The moss grew thicker beneath and around the eggs, coating the pillars and connecting the nests throughout the low-ceilinged cavern.

            There were Telk as well, pairs seated beside egg groups, tentacled fingers splayed over the iridescent eggs. The Telk language, the first Leonard had really heard it, sounded like music, lilting words in warm tones that filled the cavern with a pleasant hum that made Leonard’s skin tingle like standing in a sunbeam. Almost reverently, the Telk spoke to the eggs, their changing colors mimicked by those they touched. The blooming colors moved in soft waves from one egg to the next, taken up by the moss surrounding them.

            A welcome sort of drowsiness came over Leonard, his breathing and heart slowing to the flow of the room around him. The love in the room was almost a tangible presence, heavy against his mind. Beside him, Pavel stared in quiet awe, looking every bit as relaxed as Leonard felt.

            “It is beautiful,” Pavel murmured.

            “Yeah,” Leonard agreed, tracing his gaze over Pavel’s features, brighter and somehow more defined by the sensory quality of the siita. Pavel turned his head, a little smile curling his lips and lighting his hazy eyes before he turned back. Leonard again dragged his attention away from Pavel and back to the room.

            Slowly, Pavel eased away from Leonard, drifting over to the closest nest. The Telk previously sitting next to it had moved to a new pillar at a touch from Omaru, and the colors from the moss now leaked toward the nest instead of away. Omaru stepped back as well, giving Pavel enough room to kneel beside the swirling eggs.

            “Can I..?” Pavel asked, hesitating before actually laying a hand on the precious spheres.

            “Yes,” Oma said, pleased. They brushed fingers over Pavel’s temple. “Tell them here. They will understand.”

            With a quick glance up to Leonard, and then back to Omaru, Pavel let out a shaky breath and smoothed one palm over the eggs. Immediately, his eyes fluttered shut and his second hand quickly joined the first as a smile spread over his lips. Pavel’s mouth opened as if he wanted to speak, but nothing followed.

            Carefully, Leonard folded to his knees beside Pavel, reaching one hand to touch a different egg. He hesitated only an inch away, feeling warmth emanate from its surface, and glanced up to Omaru. They were both a glowing purple, waiting. He brushed a feather-light touch over the shell.

            _Warmth love excitement curiosity welcome_

            The intensity of the feelings stole the breath from Leonard’s chest. Through the palm he pressed to the silky shell he could sense every other presence in the siita- every other egg, every other Telk, every human. Like recognizing a stranger in a crowd, _human_ pinged through the web and eager curiosity echoed back, bursting with so many questions, so many answers.

            Everything filled him up and emptied from him in the same instant. All of the lives that had touched these eggs, all of the love and the learning and good times the Telk had ever experienced, Leonard saw and felt and experienced them together. Every hatch, every bond, every festival, every triumph. They washed through him like a shot of good bourbon, warm and tingling.

            When the surging wave lapped backward to the sea of connection, it drew out everything within him in return. Days spent playing as a child in the hot Georgia sun, triumphs over every test on his way through medical school, his first encounter with Pam. The day Jo was born, her brilliant smile, the warmth in his chest when she hugged him, the love that welled in him every time he got to see her now.

            The smile on Jim’s face when he’d handed Leonard’s flask back on that shuttle, and Leonard had known they’d be inseparable. The pride Leonard had felt at actually graduating from Starfleet Academy, after everything. The thrill he would never admit to the first time he’d set foot back on the newly-repaired Enterprise.

            The first time Pavel had taken his hand, here on this planet. The first time Leonard had kissed him back, and the tender feeling of watching him sleep so peacefully.

            All of it slipped out of him, the spaces left behind filled in by emotions and memories that did not belong to him. Yet they flowed back out the same way his own had, and the steady ebb and flow of information settled into Leonard’s core, peaceful and easy and comforting. He gave himself up to it readily, let them all become a part of him as much as he was a part of them.

            He did not notice the passing of time, but when he opened eyes he hadn’t even realized he’d closed, his cheeks were long wet with tears. Oma touched his cheek, turning a soft blue, and Leonard covered their hand with his.

            He understood, now.

            “I’m sorry,” he breathed.

            They had known this, once. At some point, Oma and Aru must have been a part of a web like this, must have been eggs in the siita of a colony somewhere, only to have it torn away from them. Segregated, experimented upon, exiled. Lost. Alone. Even here, among so many others, they were alone, not daring to touch this network lest it recognize their differences the way it had recognized Leonard and Pavel as humans.

            “We are used to it,” Oma told him gently.

            Leonard could still feel the echo of the web, fading now and leaving him feeling empty and full and completely wrung out. He glanced over and although Pavel’s cheeks were dry again, his eyes were still reddened with the same wealth of emotion, too much to even begin to sort. He looked every bit as shattered as Leonard felt, and although Leonard would have liked to wrap him up in a hug instead, he merely held out his hand, palm up, and smiled.

            Pavel smiled back at him without hesitation, watery and still overwhelmed, and took Leonard’s hand with a gentle squeeze. Relief washed through Leonard at the return of even such a simple, singular connection, and just like that, Leonard knew.

            There was no going back.

            Prime Directive and regulations be damned, they were going to help these people.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited for this chapter, this is hands down my favorite element of the Telk, and I hope you enjoyed it as well!


	16. The Holosuites

  

            Their visit to the siita took longer than Pavel had expected, though he was not in a hurry to leave. The air inside the siita had a pleasant weight and feel, everything stark and bright and clear, and he found the murmur of the Telk soothing. He had not touched any of the other eggs, after the first, his muscles still trembling as though he had run an entire marathon in an instant. It was a good feeling, thrilling and wondrous, but exhausting in a way that left him no room to feel anything else.

            Now he sat at one of the curved tables in the dining hall, Leonard beside him and bowls of tasteless food in both their hands. Pavel was not hungry- he was not _anything_ , at the moment. He felt more like a reverberating piano string than a human being, emanating existence as he waited for the echoes to fade and leave him still once more.

            Leonard nudged his arm and he realized he had been staring vacantly into his food. He looked up, and startled a little to notice that they had been joined by Fil and Gop at some point. He blinked. Bright, amused pink shattered over Gop’s form.

            “You visited the siita,” Fil said, like amusement and forgiveness together. “Most must sleep after their first time.”

            “I can see why,” Pavel agreed. If he thought they had time, or that he could actually sleep, a nap would not go awry. He felt like he could sleep for days. “But we cannot. We are going home soon.”

            “We heard.” Gop’s colors darkened to one Pavel did not have a name for, but knew now was sadness. Reading their colors seemed easier, now. He wondered how long that would last, and if he would later retain anything he experienced in the web. “Before you go, we have something to show to you, too.”

            “What is it?” Leonard asked, setting his bowl on the table. He had only eaten half of it.

            Gop shattered into bright pink, fading to a softer shade after a second. “I have scheduled time in a holosuite. Pavel told us that your Federation might like this technology. It may… help you.”

            Pavel glanced to Leonard, who looked up and gave only an infinitesimal nod. Advanced technology would definitely be a good bargaining chip, if they had to fight to get the Federation to agree to interfere with this planet’s local problems. “I think it will,” Pavel said, before Leonard could respond. “We would be happy to see your holosuite.”

            After a few flashes of excited colors, Gop settled at a touch from Fil. “Finish your food first,” Fil said evenly. “Then we shall go.”

            Containing a groan at the prospect of eating anything, Pavel quickly spooned up the rest of his meal, which still tasted remarkably like nothing at all. Beside him, Leonard did the same, although slower, and then Pavel stacked their bowls and crossed the room to return them to one of the dish carts.

            When he turned back around, he caught sight of Leonard, now standing and brushing at his Starfleet uniform as if he had gotten something on it. Pavel’s breath caught and his belly flipped over as their impending journey home really hit him. They were going home. It was over.

            Everything would go back to normal.

            He swallowed down his broken heart and finished moving back to the group. He had said there would be no mess. He had said he would _cause_ no mess, and he intended to stick to that. He flashed a smile to Leonard’s curious look, and turned his attention to the waiting Telk.

            “Lead the way,” he said, proud of how steady he sounded.

 

* * *

 

            Pavel expected the suites to be… bigger, at least the size of the Enterprise rec rooms, with space to move around. From how Gop had described them earlier, they should have the capacity to allow people to walk in any direction, up inclines and down descents, as endlessly as the programming would allow.

            What they got instead was a room approximately three meters on each side, with metal panels on the floor, ceiling, and walls. They had a strange, glossy quality, one which Pavel assumed was due to the properties of the metal itself. However, after Fil tapped out a few quick commands on the console by the door, Pavel realized the gloss was actually some kind of display or projector surface.

            Between one instant and the next, the metallic room transformed into a sparse forest for as far as Pavel could see. Thin, smooth-trunked trees scattered in loose patterns around them, no branches on them until their tops, nearly thirty or forty meters above them. Below them, the forest floor was littered with star shaped leaves. The echoes of the room disappeared, replaced by the ambient noises of life- the flutter of wind, the murmur of creatures in the trees, the heavy sound of wide open space. Somewhere above, the system’s star shone through the trees, dappling the ground in soft, yellow light.

            “Oh,” Pavel said quietly, reaching out to the tree closest to him and finding it solid beneath his palm. The bark was soft, spongy almost, and smooth like polished metal.

            “This forest is south of our community,” Fil said quietly, looking around as if to quickly memorize the sight, or maybe check that it had appeared correctly. “It is younger than the Eastern forest- much of it was destroyed in a great fire a couple hundred years ago.”

            “It feels real,” Leonard said, running fingertips up and down the bark of a different tree.

            Pavel peered into the distance, but he could not see any of the walls, no trace of even the outlines of the panels. “Will we not run into the walls, in such a small room?”

            Of course, Pavel had been in holographic environments at the Academy – they all had – but the holograms there could not be touched. Much like walking through a beam of light, passing between the projectors and the projection would disrupt the image. Due to this limitation, most of the environments were the same size as the room in which they were contained. The ones that were not were usually restricted by natueal barriers, or marked along the edges so visitors knew when to stop so they did not walk into actual walls.

            “Try,” said Gop eagerly, flashing a bright shade of blue.

            With a skeptical look at first Gop and then Fil, Pavel took a few hesitant steps forward. Then a few more. He knew approximately where the wall should be, and at least as far as he could go from one side of the room to the other, but when he had passed both possibilities and encountered no obstacles, he turned back around. The others stood a few meters away, watching him.

            He threw up his arms in an exaggerated gesture of defeat. “I give up!” he called back, then startled when the environment disappeared and the group was standing right beside him again. Leonard jumped as well, which made Pavel feel slightly better.

            “The hell was that?” Leonard demanded, face scrunching in irritation. “How’d you do that?”

            Fil tapped another button, and then their blue bubbled with amused purple. “You may walk, now.”

            Pavel took a step backward, and the floor did… something. He could not feel it moving, but his feet had almost no traction on it, the surface seeming to melt and shift and flow under him. Though he began walking forward at a brisk pace, he did not actually cover any ground. He watched, mesmerized, as the floor flowed beneath every step. Though he searched for any sensation of movement, he found nothing.

            Falling still, he turned to Filgop. “I traveled away from you,” he said carefully. “I understand if I am alone in an environment like this, how it would work. But if we walk in separate directions-“

            “It compensates,” Gop said simply. “There are nine cells in this room, and each is capable of producing a separate environment, to show individuals their own perspective.”

            Pavel stared for a moment, reminding himself that these two were white Telk, the same as Omaru. Now that Pavel and Leonard knew their secret, they no longer seemed interested in sounding like the grey Telk. It was disconcerting, after days of hearing them try to blend in. Although, Pavel thought as he looked at Gop, they had not ever tried particularly hard around him. Perhaps they had been hoping he would guess.

            “What about interaction?” Pavel asked. “If you are close enough to touch one another, would you not be in the same cell?”

            Gop’s blue shattered with an unknown color, one Pavel recognized now as embarrassment. “There are some problems, still,” they admitted sheepishly. “For only two people, it is not a problem to share a cell and interact, but groups… well, normally only one pair is allowed into a suite at a time.”

            Fil tapped a couple of keys and the floor shimmered. “Would you like to see some other environments?”

            “Yes,” Leonard said before Pavel could answer, and Pavel turned to look at him in surprise. Leonard gave a little shrug. “I’m sick to death of space and tunnels.”

            Gop turned an alarmed shade of yellow at the phrasing, but Fil was already tapping keys and before they could say a word, color sprung back around them. Pavel gasped and took a step closer to the group, away from the large brightly-colored creatures standing in a loose herd only a meter or two from them. They stood as high as his waist at the shoulder, with snakelike necks and wedge-shaped heads and chests like barrels. Their feet were cloven like a deer’s, but with a half a dozen splits.

            “What are they?” Pavel asked quietly, and one of the creatures lifted its sharp head to look at them.

            “Kaltha,” Gop said, reaching out one hand to the nearest of them. They laid a palm gently to the neon blue and pink hide of the kaltha, and its furry pelt twitched as it turned to see them better. “They are kind.”

            Pavel blew out a breath, and remembered that this was a simulation. Fil would not have programmed something that would harm users. “And soft,” he murmured as he also smoothed a hand over the beast closest to him. It leaned into the touch without lifting its head. “You eat these.”

            “Yes,” Gop said. “They are good for many things. Fil, you should show them jolas.”

            Without hesitation, Fil tapped a few buttons and the kaltha flickered away, replaced by a cliffside overlooking a vast, red ocean far below them. Every single inch of space on the rocks around them was coated in what appeared to be some kind of feathered, silvery serpent. In the air above the water they flew in flurries that looked like living art, intricate patterns that dipped and rose over the ocean. For a moment all the noise was deafening, until Fil tapped another key and it muted to background ambiance. Pavel blinked and looked over to where Leonard was uncovering his ears with caution.

            “The hell are these things?” Leonard asked, shifting his boot and shoving a pile of the softly shrieking creatures away from his feet. The tiny creatures swarmed right back in, like water rushing to fill a hole.

            “Jolas,” Fil said, looking down at them. “I believe humans would call them… pets. Our young often capture them to play with, though we try to discourage this. They do not live long away from their colonies, only a year or two, but they cannot go back once separated.”

            “Why not?” Pavel asked, sitting down in the swarm of jolas. They apparently had no qualms about human interaction, crawling all over him with kitten-sharp claws and feather-soft brushes of web-like wings.

            Fil bubbled with a yellow-orange color, a shrug, and looked back to their control console. “They are not accepted back,” they said quietly. “The others reject them for leaving, despite that it was not their fault they had to.”

            Pavel looked over, heart sinking as he realized Fil perhaps was not only talking about the tiny creatures all around them. He looked to Leonard, who seemed to have come to the same conclusion, but where Pavel did not know what to say, Leonard stepped over and put a hand on Fil’s arm.

            “You’re not a jola,” he said, gently, waiting until Fil looked up at him before continuing. “It is your choice to leave, because your colony is hurting you. Leaving won’t kill you- it’ll give you room to thrive. And you’re gonna have help. You know, humans haven’t got colonies, not like here.”

            At that, Fil looked down again. “You have crews.”

            “We have those,” Leonard agreed slowly. “But we also have families.”

            “Small groups of blood relatives, usually parents and offspring,” Gop said, shuffling closer, their colors a hesitant shade of mint. “Sometimes including recent ancestry when they become old or ill.”

            “Well, that’s one definition,” Leonard agreed again, and Pavel could see where this was going, even if Fil and Gop could not. “But we also _choose_ a family. Humans have a saying that means the bonds we choose are stronger than the ones we’re born into. Do you understand what that means?”

            Fil remained a passive shade of pastel grey, but Gop struggled with keeping the yellow off their skin. “You think we will find stronger bonds than a Telk colony has?”

            Leonard smiled, and Pavel nearly stopped breathing at the patient fondness in the curve of his lips. That was the smile he had fallen for, so long ago on the deck of the Enterprise. “I think you already have,” Leonard told them. “Who do you trust the most, of anyone on this planet? Who do you love the most?”

            “Fil,” Gop said instantly, looking over as if searching for confirmation. Fil bubbled with purple and pink and green and touched their fingers to Gop’s in answer.

            “And are you bonded to them like a grey Telk pair?” Leonard pressed, though the answer was already clear.

            “No, I chose them,” Gop answered, seeming to realize Leonard’s point. They turned to look back at Leonard. “And Omaru chose us, too. You think we will find others to choose?”

            “Yes,” Leonard said easily. “In fact, I’m certain of it. You’re going to be fine.”

            “You can trust when he says that,” Pavel added, drawing their attention. “He is a doctor.”

            Leonard rolled his eyes, but both the Telk turned a delighted pink-purple. Gop shattered a couple of colors in quick succession, and leaned pointedly against Fil until they moved away from the console. Then Gop began rapidly tapping out a sequence, and the environment once again shifted.

            Suddenly, they were surrounded by Telk. Thousands of them, bustling around a huge field among wooden poles carved with their written language. Though the sound was still oddly muffled, the Telk all shifted colors, turning the crowd into a flutter of rainbow communication. Pavel counted at least a dozen shifting patterns- shatters like Gops, bubbles like Fil, swirls like Oma, but also top to bottom shifts and ripples and sharp slashes and bursts like fireworks.

            Gop peeked over at them. “This is where Telk may choose,” they said. “At the trade festival, every 12 years. Not many choose to leave their home colony, but enough that we have been able to slip through the cracks. Enough that no one is upset at new arrivals to the colony during this time.”

            Pavel could not help his soft sound of realization. Of course there were white Telk in other colonies. If Omaru were half as crafty as they needed to be to have survived this long, they would have sent a pair to each colony. If they could rescue and care for any children long enough, then all they would have to do is trade pairs at the festival, and no one would be the wiser. Though he hated it was necessary, Pavel was impressed by the genius simplicity of such a plan.

            “Which colony are you from?” Pavel asked, looking between Fil and Gop and wondering how they had managed to get away with having two different methods of color changing if pairs were supposed to be from the same colony.

            Turning a brilliant shade of pink, Gop made a grating, delighted noise. “This one!” they exclaimed, practically vibrating. “I am of Oma.”

            Pavel blinked and Leonard gave a little jolt beside him. “ _Of Oma_?” Leonard sputtered. “You’re their kid?”

            “Yes,” Gop said, as if it should have been obvious.

            In retrospect, Pavel thought maybe it should have been. Where the others had some degree of caution to everything they did, Gop seemed to throw themself at everything they did with abandon. Unlike Oma and Aru and Fil, Gop was loud and ambitious and almost thoughtless in how they treated existence. If Oma had known they created Gop, perhaps they had been able to bring Gop into the world with love. Maybe Gop was what white Telk looked like, if treated normally.

            “Well you coulda said so,” Leonard gruffed, and Pavel only just barely managed not to reach out to touch, to calm him. “Humans care to know when people are related to each other.”

            “Telk do not,” Fil said, softly. “Oma’s interest in their own egg was due simply to the nature of their differences from the other Telk. They wished to determine if white Telk would produce grey Telk or more white Telk. What they produced… was Gop.”

            Gop flashed a rainbow of colors, the sharp edged shatters turning to happy, blue bubbles that burst apart into swirls like Oma and Aru’s, and Pavel thought he understood how Filgop had gotten away with different patterns. “You have control over how your colors change,” Pavel concluded, and Gop’s blue brightened.

            “Yes,” Gop agreed. “I do not need to think about my colors- they change the same way as grey Telk colors. But I can change them easily, like white Telk. I can turn any color.”

            “You can lie,” Leonard said, and Gop flashed red and yellow, fading swiftly into yellow.

            “Lie,” they repeated, as if tasting the word. “This means to not tell the truth?”

            “Yes,” Pavel said. “It does not just mean you do not speak, though. It means you tell something that is not true.”

            “Then yes,” Gop confirmed. “I can lie. I choose not to, unless I must. I believe you are familiar with the concept.”

            Leonard snorted, and Pavel tried not to smile at the tease. Gop was definitely his favorite of the people he had met down here. “We may have some idea,” Pavel said, earning him an eyeroll from Leonard.

            “This contraption got any other tricks?” Leonard asked, motioning vaguely around himself, still obviously a little put out at more information being kept from him.

            Pavel pressed his lips together to keep from commenting. He did not think Leonard understood the significance of such an intricate yet powerful system. Something like this was invaluable for its recreational value alone, not to mention the infinite uses it would have if applied to schooling. Simulations of all kinds could be run without risk to the user.

            Gop flicked a few of the controls, selecting something from the panel screen, and the environment changed again, this time to a small, round room with a few of the same soft, blobby chairs Pavel had seen the children in the mess hall sleeping on during their free day. He looked at the screens on the walls, and the plants on the low shelves set into them, and realized what they were looking at.

            “A classroom,” Pavel said, then quickly added: “A place for teaching?”

            “Yes,” Fil said. “We created the technology for this purpose. Here, we can teach young white Telk how to fit into the colony, after they are moved from the kil’ta reservoir. We teach them to change their colors, and how to use the chemical implants to read and send the right chemicals for speaking.”

            Pavel hummed and nodded. “You have made a lot of amazing technology to help your people.”

            “Yes,” Fil said, glancing to Gop and then back to Pavel. “You told us that your Federation would be interested in paying for this technology, but… Pavel, we would give all of it for a chance to go someplace we had no need of any of it.”

            Pavel’s heart twisted up at the words, and he recalled what Leonard had said the moment they had been left alone to eat- they _had to_ help these people. The last humans who had landed here had not helped, had left them here to survive on their own for another Federation year. Pavel found it surprising that Omaru had trusted him and Leonard enough to tell them. Considering how that First Contact had gone…

            Breath catching, Pavel looked up to Leonard with wide eyes as realization hit him.

            It _had_ to have been _them_.

            It had to have been Leonard, and it had to have been Pavel with him, or everything that had happened might not have. Leonard’s insistence upon coming to the surface to interact with their doctors personally had put him into contact with Omaru. Pavel’s avid interest in their technology had endeared him to Filgop on that first day, when Gop had excitedly explained about the chemical building device. Pavel’s shared lie with Leonard had actually shown they could keep a secret.

            Now they were here, and considering the romantic nature of their relationship, Leonard would certainly have the Captain’s ear about taking in refugees. Even if the Federation did not normally support the action, Captain Kirk would be able to get away with it, with little consequence.

            On top of that, Pavel now had enough information about technology that Filgop had created that he could argue their case to the Federation, if the captain gave him a chance to do so. Since Gop had created the technology, they could legally share it outside of the bounds of the Telk’s agreement with the Federation, as a bargaining chip or as payment.

            The look Leonard turned back to him told Pavel that he had already come to the same conclusion. It had to have been them, and they had to help now- if they just left, without helping, there was no guarantee the next Federation visitors would have any chance at recreating the same situation. There was no way Omaru’s people would trust their secret to a third group, if the second one abandoned them like the first had.

            “We’re gonna make sure you get there,” Leonard said softly, over the sound of Pavel’s silence. “Someplace safe. I promise you that.”

            “We will make sure you get somewhere safe,” Pavel agreed, finally finding his words. “No matter what, we will help you.”

            Seeing the relief on Filgop’s faces and the gentle, reassuring smile Leonard gave them, Pavel knew he had spoken truly. They would do this, fight with and for these people, no matter what, until they were safe. And even if everything else became a mess between him and Leonard because of this trip, Pavel thought it might have been worth the chance to save these people.

 

* * *

 

            A few hours later, after Filgop had taken them through more than a dozen other environments, the group emerged from the holosuite to find Omaru walking briskly toward them. Fil shifted toward the back of the group to close the door behind them while Gop moved forward to greet Omaru, colors and soft words exchanged between them before Oma turned to face Leonard.

            “Yewhara seek you,” they said. “They came to our lab to tell you that Command received another transmission from your ship. They have arrived early, and your captain wishes to speak to you again.” They paused a beat, and then swirled with purple amusement. “It seems you may have caused him some concern.”

            Leonard’s skin flushed, and he rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he agreed, without elaborating, and Pavel wondered when Leonard had spoken to the captain; and about _what,_ that it could have driven the Enterprise to speed up her mission. “Didn’t mean to. Should we head to your Command office?”

            “Do you know the way?” Aru asked. “We can take you, if you need.”

            “No, s’alright,” Leonard said, waving them off. “The less time you spend around Yewhara the better, right?”

            “Agree,” Aru said pointedly, and Pavel’s belly clenched a little. The word no longer held any amusement for him- it was a clear reminder that, no matter how empty the hall, they were still in a dangerously public space.

            Oma reached out and touched Leonard’s arm. “We will ensure your plant friends are ready to travel to your home. Is there anything else you need?”

            “No,” Leonard said at the same time as Pavel said, “Yes!”

            Leonard looked over at him, and Pavel ducked his head a little bit, but there was actually a _lot_ they needed. He turned to Gop. “I need information on your technology. Schematics, if you have them, but explanations if you do not. Something I can show the Federation admiralty that they will understand.”

            “I will do this,” Gop said, changing colors enthusiastically. “We will make you a package for going home as well!”

            Pavel smiled and held out his hands to touch to Gop’s, fingers sliding under the leather-soft tentacles for just a second. “Say it is a present,” he told them, knowing Gop would understand. No one was going to inspect a gift.

            “Agree,” Gop said, and allowed Fil to herd them off toward the exit after another brief hand touch with both of them. Pavel was going to sorely miss the two of them- they had become fast friends.

            Omaru said their goodbyes quickly as well, heading back to the med lab to gather the plants for Leonard, as well as information on a few other medical devices and procedures Leonard had witnessed that had not been in the initial reports. Then they were alone again, and Leonard did not look at him when suggesting they ought to get to Command.

            “What will you say?” Pavel asked, hanging back. “About us, when we get back?”

            For just a moment, Leonard looked stricken, and then he shook his head, brushing off the question. “I don’t know, kid, but the sooner we get back, the sooner we can tell someone about this mess, so they can start rescuing these people, right? Come on.”

            He did not move, and Leonard stopped again to look at him. “You know it had to be us, right?” he said, barely giving volume to the words, wanting to remind Leonard even just once that this was not a mistake.

            Leonard froze, looking like Pavel had just cornered him somehow, and Pavel let out a breath and looked down. “Chekov, I…” Leonard started.

            “It had to be a doctor to talk to Omaru,” Pavel pushed on, “and someone with an interest in tech, to talk to Filgop. And it… could not have been two people who were already together, or we could not have… done what we did. Omaru would not have given away their secret to us if they had not seen us lie to protect ourselves. They chose to trust us because… because it was us. It had to be us.” He flicked his gaze up to find Leonard staring at him like he was twisting a knife. “I’m sorry, I-“

            “Don’t be sorry,” Leonard interrupted. He blew out a heavy breath and shook his head before looking up toward the ceiling. “Look, it was good it was us. Regardless of anything else, that’s true. Because you’re right, it had to go exactly the way it went. And maybe that’s just what we tell them. We’ll figure it out.”

            Pavel nodded agreement and pursed his lips. Of course that is what they would have to say- they had done what they needed to do. That did not make it hurt any less to hear Leonard say it. “Yes, okay.”

            They stood there for a moment longer, awkward and stiff, before Leonard cleared his throat. “C’mon then. We need to get to Command so we can get off this rock and get the ball rollin’.”

            Pavel nodded again. This time, when Leonard stepped toward the exit, Pavel followed at his heel.

 

* * *

 

            Pavel watched as Leonard clasped hands again with Oma, the two talking in low voices as Telk moved around them to prepare to open the doors to the underground community. They had managed to get into contact with the Enterprise, and Leonard had exchanged heated words with the captain after the captain had suggested they try to beam the two of them up. The transporters were still not working correctly through the disturbances caused by the remnants of the storm.

            Leonard had not liked it any better when the captain suggested they walk to the shuttle and try to _fly_ through the storm instead.

            In the end, however, he had acquiesced to the latter plan, and now they were donning suits the Telk had modified to fit them, ones that would protect them from the worst of the elements and allow them to breathe something that was not soil particulates. Omaru had given Leonard a container he could strap to his back, full of plants and samples, and Filgop had brought a second container with data cards. They would need translating into code the Enterprise computer could read, but considering Pavel had already learned to do it to put information on their PADDs, he did not figure it would be a problem.

            “Ready?” Leonard asked, his voice tinny through the short range suit comm.

            “Ready,” Pavel confirmed, shifting in his suit. Unlike the typical fabric, this did not self-alter to fit better. He supposed they did not get enough use to merit it.

            “Be careful,” Aru told them. “Get home safely.”

            “We will be watching,” Gop said, touching the small transmitter on the arm of Pavel’s suit. “You do not have far to go, but if something happens to you, we will know. We will come for you.”

            Pavel smiled and put his hand over Gop’s. “Thank you, friend. We will meet again.”

            “Soon, I hope,” Gop said, but quietly, and then flushed a pretty shade of purple. “Now go!”

            A few feet away, two of the Telk from the command center pressed hands to the doorway, and it began to peel open. Pavel took one last opportunity to touch hands with Fil, and then Gop. “Thank you,” he said softly.

            Then he stepped away to join Leonard at the threshold, ready to walk the winding tunnel to get to the surface. “Do you think it will be bad up there?” he asked, across only their short comm.

            “I think it’ll be better than the first time we considered going out in it,” Leonard said, fiddling with the cuff of his suit.

            Pavel huffed softly, remembering the first day when Leonard had told him that if things got bad they could run out through the storm and hide in the shuttle for two weeks. He was not sure if that would have been better or worse than what happened, but he was glad they had not. At least inside the compound they had had others to talk to and room to breathe and better food and amenities. He could in no way regret all of the real water baths they had managed to take since their arrival. He would miss them. He would miss a lot of things and a lot of people.

            With one last, steadying breath, Pavel crossed into the exit tunnel. The floor was striated, giving their boots a better grip than the indoor tunnels. Leonard walked behind him carefully, one hand up on the wall as if he felt unsteady. Slowly, the closer they got to the surface, the lichen died off, the thick carpet on the ceiling giving way to a scarce spattering of patches.

            After a few minutes that felt much longer, the lichen light gave way to the light of the system’s star, yellow and jarring. Unlike the previous tunnel, the exit tunnel had no iris at the end to block out light or debris; it served only as a twisting blockade to prevent the wind from battering anyone leaving the compound.

            Even through the clouds, the new light was brighter than anything Pavel had seen since they took to ground, and he found himself blinking and squinting while his eyes adjusted.

            The surface, it turned out, was not as scary as Pavel had feared. The yellow sky above was still bruised with swirls of green and black and purple clouds, but the wind below pushed less than even the first day. They would have trouble launching, but not enough to prevent them from making it.

            Leonard slowed to a stop beside him, peering up in to the ominous sky. “Doesn’t look good,” he commented. “You sure you can get us up through that?”

            “Yes,” Pavel said simply, and stepped out into the storm, not waiting for Leonard. High above, a bolt of red and orange energy arced from cloud to cloud.

            The walk did not take long. Pavel reached the shuttle door first and managed to get it opened before Leonard joined him. The craft looked like it had sunk into the ground by a few inches, but Pavel knew it was only a buildup of particulate matter, and would slough off easily enough when they launched. McCoy shooed him into the vessel first, and Pavel went gladly to begin the boot up process.

            The shuttle was, thankfully, still fully functional, the controls leaping to life at his word. The computer began lighting up systems and giving him reports on each and, aside from a little battering to the outer hull, nothing had been damaged. As long as they could get through the clouds, they could make it home just fine. He said as much to McCoy, who had gotten their gear secured and was in the middle of strapping himself into the co-pilot’s seat.

            “Then let’s get off this rock,” Leonard said, testing the belt and looking at the controls like he might start pushing buttons if Pavel did not.

            The problem was… Pavel could not seem to find it in him to start the launch that would take them home, because this was it. This was his last chance to admit what he wanted, to ask Leonard if there was any chance for something more. He wanted so desperately to tell Leonard how much he felt, how much he wanted to continue this, to be honest after his deception.

            Instead, when Leonard looked over and asked what the hold up was, Pavel found himself saying, “What exactly should we put in our reports?” in the most mild tone he had ever used. It surprised him, how calm he sounded when it felt like his emotions suddenly had the storm beat. The draining effects of the Telk network must be wearing thin, finally.

            “Reports?” Leonard echoed, as if he had never heard the word before.

            Pavel grimaced, hands tight on the flight controls. “When we return to the ship, there is a good chance they will split us up for examinations, and we may be asked to make our reports immediately, without another chance to discuss… what happened. Our stories should agree.”

            Beside him, Leonard had frozen in place, barely breathing. They stayed like that for a long few moments, tense and awkward, before Leonard let out a shaky breath. “The truth,” he said finally. “That we… we did what we had to do to survive a potentially hostile or deadly situation. That none of it will interfere with our duties aboard the Enterprise.”

            Right, Pavel thought. Of course it should not interfere, because it was over. “And what do we… tell them we did?” He could practically taste his heart.

            Leonard was quiet for another moment, and then he shook his head. “I guess just… as little as possible. Ain’t none of their business, so long as they know everything went fine. We tell them… well, we tell them we followed the Telk customs as best we could, and let them guess what that means. Admiralty doesn’t take too close a look at that sort of thing.”

            “Unless someone causes a problem,” Pavel said, staring out the front shield of the shuttle. “Which we are about to do, Doctor.”

            “Yeah,” Leonard agreed. It sounded like surrender. “But you let them ask, if they wanna know more. I know you know how to do that.”

            Pavel flinched a little at the soft reminder, closing his eyes, and drew a few deep breaths before flicking on the navigation. “I do,” he agreed, and then hesitated again. Last chance. He swallowed thickly, and pressed a finger softly to the control panel. “You should hold on. It will most likely be a bumpy ride home.”

            For a tense moment, Leonard held completely still, and then he let out a breath Pavel could have sworn sounded… disappointed. “Yeah,” he said quietly. Then he straightened up, collecting himself, and said: “If I pass out… don’t wake me up til we’re home.”

 

* * *

 

            It was not the worst advice Pavel had ever received, but thankfully he did not have to follow it. They managed to get into the air and up through the gently roiling storm with only mild malfunctions in the guidance system. As soon as they got through the clouds, communication from the Enterprise came through to say they had them on scanners, and it was only a few more minutes before Pavel gently settled the shuttle in the bay.

            The captain was there to greet them, along with Mr. Spock, and Scotty. Almost as soon as his feet hit the shuttle bay floor, Leonard took off and the captain followed him without a word. Mr. Spock stepped between Pavel and the two fleeing officers, as if he thought Pavel might run after them, and maybe he had good reason. If Leonard had communicated any part of their personal situation during his earlier transmission, the Captain would almost certainly have made Mr. Spock aware of possible tensions.

            “Welcome back, Mr. Chekov,” Mr. Spock greeted as Pavel clambered out of the side of the shuttle. “Given your extended stay in alien territory without assistance, you should report to the medical bay for an examination before filing your report.”

            “Aye, sir,” Pavel said quietly. “We brought back some specimens and technology that I believe Dr. McCoy would prefer to go through personally before anyone else touches them.”

            “Noted,” Mr. Spock said mildly. “Are they stable?”

            “Yes,” Pavel told him. “I believe some of them are intended for Mr. Sulu. Please make sure he gets them.”

            Mr. Spock inclined his head in acknowledgement of the plan and stepped aside for Pavel to go past. Pavel took the invitation and retreated as quickly as possible. Best to get into and out of sickbay before Leonard got there at all.

 

* * *

 

            When he arrived at Hikaru’s botany lab two hours later, Hikaru was already there. The table in front of him had the plants from the reservoir, and Hikaru was using a small, make-shift device to flash colors at them. He glanced up when Pavel entered, and set the device to the side, leaving it on a pale, blue color. The plants all slowly melted to reflect the same color.

            “Welcome back,” Hikaru greeted, pulling Pavel into a hug as soon as he was close enough. Pavel let him, burying his nose in Hikaru’s shoulder and pressing hands into his shoulderblades for a few seconds. When they pulled away, Hikaru gave him a look of concern. “Are you okay?”

            “No,” he said as his friend moved around the side of the desk to sit back down. Pavel hopped up and took a seat on the edge, legs swinging a little and palms flat next to his hips.

            Hikaru paused, then delicately picked up the color-changing device he had obviously built himself. “Do you want to talk about it?”

            “Not really,” Pavel said, knowing full well he would do so anyway, that he needed to talk to someone he knew would not betray his confidence. Even if the things he told them broke standard regulations.

            “Okay,” Hikaru said simply, turning his attention back to the new plants.

            Pavel knew that if he left it at that, Hikaru would not push, which is why he opened his mouth and told him everything, from the screaming meltdown in the hallway outside their room that first day, to the stilted conversation in the shuttle and the way Leonard had just bolted from the shuttle bay with Jim. Through it all, Hikaru sat quietly, making small, humming noises of acknowledgement at the right places.

            Finally, Pavel wound down, lying draped over the far side of the work desk on his back, staring up at the ceiling. For a little while, Hikaru fiddled with the light, speaking colors to the plants and recording their answers. Pavel just waited, feeling the empty relief of sharing the burden of his problems. Some of it probably came as a surprise to Hikaru, but some of it Pavel knew did not. Hikaru had at least known how Pavel felt about Leonard- they had had that conversation often enough over the past three years.

            “You certainly don’t do anything by halves, do you,” Hikaru said at last, setting down the tool. The plants quieted to a pleasant shade of blue. At least someone had figured out how to befriend them.

            “Apparently not,” Pavel replied wryly, feeling a little better at Hikaru’s light tone.

            “It’s a good quality,” Hikaru assured him, turning his chair so he could put his elbow on the table and look at Pavel until Pavel looked back. “Really gets you places. Messy places. Like the deck of a starship about to warp into an ambush.”

            Pavel turned his head to look at his friend, and Hikaru raised his eyebrows like an answer. “That was a mess,” Pavel agreed.

            “Yeah,” Hikaru agreed. “But, it got better after some time.”

            “You are suggesting I should give this situation time, too,” Pavel concluded, then sighed and turned his gaze back to the ceiling. “That will not work. He is with someone else.”

            At that, Hikaru snorted softly and sat back. “That’s not what I meant. I meant if you give it time, you’ll get over it,” he explained lightly.

            Pavel closed his eyes, not caring at all for the way his heart seized up in his chest at the nonchalance in Hikaru’s words and tone, as if he thought there had never been any other possibility. As if it did not matter whether or not Leonard had someone else, whether or not they had gone to the planet together, whether or not anything that had happened between them seemed real. As if it was always destined to be nothing.

            Considering the way Leonard had fled after they docked, perhaps Hikaru was right. Perhaps Pavel was the only one who did not see this coming, the only one who dared hope it could work out differently.

            “What if I do not want to _get over it_?” Pavel said, letting himself sound cranky to cover the sound of his broken heart.

            Hikaru sighed and set the device down with a quiet clunk, giving Pavel all of his attention. “Look, Pavel. Things got intense down there because you two were alone together in a high stress situation. But you’re home now. You’re safe. Everything will go back to normal if you let it- it’s just going to take time.”

            Pavel groaned and covered his eyes with his arm. Trust Hikaru to put the situation into perspective so easily. Things here on the ship, at least between him and Leonard, were not life and death, not the way they had been on the planet. Here, he had space to get away from Leonard. Here, he had a job to do and friends to see and projects to distract himself with.

            Here, as Hikaru had said, he had time.

            “You are right, as usual,” Pavel told him a while later, uncovering his eyes and forcing himself to sit up. Before he could say anything else, however, his comm beeped politely to request his attention. He glanced back at Hikaru, and took a steadying breath. “Chekov,” he answered.

            “Mr. Chekov,” came the captain’s voice, “please report to my ready room immediately.”

            “Yes, sir,” Pavel answered, stomach flipping over. He had just sent in his written report of the away mission before coming here, but Leonard had more than likely given his report directly, which meant the captain already knew what had happened. The only reason he would be calling Pavel to his ready room would be to discuss it.

            “Good luck,” Hikaru said as Pavel slipped off the edge of the desk and adjusted his uniform.

            “Thank you,” Pavel told him quietly, flashing a tight smile. “For everything. I will see you tomorrow for shift, yes?”

            Hikaru nodded. “And you can come by my room after your talk with Kirk, if you need to. You know I’m here for you, buddy.”

            “I know,” Pavel said, though he did feel better to hear it aloud.

            Maybe it would not be so bad. Maybe Captain Kirk only wanted details about the Telk, and the technology that Mr. Spock had doubtless logged by now. Maybe they would begin working out a rescue plan even sooner than Pavel had hoped. With those thoughts still chasing their own tails, Pavel slipped out of the botany lab and headed for the turbolift.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, the pain.  
> Aren't you glad you got on this ride??  
> On a serious note, thank you so much to everyone who has come to say hi in comments, communicating with you folks has been the highlight of many a day. I'm sad to see this story coming up on its end (just a couple more chapters!) but I'm excited to start new one for these boys. I've got a whole list~!


	17. The Return

 

 

            Bolting out of the shuttle bay was not one of Leonard McCoy’s top five proudest moments, but he figured puking in front of the senior staff would have been worse. So as soon as the door opened, Leonard had brushed past Pavel and Spock and even Jim, ignoring the latter’s thousand and one questions in favor of locking himself in the nearest small, dark space.

            It took a while for his stomach and fear to settle and longer to forget the terrifying rattle of the shuttle trembling wildly around them as they braved the storm. Pavel hadn’t said a word on the ride home, focused on flying safely, and Leonard hadn’t tried to make him, focused on pretending they were not flying at all. It hadn’t worked. He had never been on a shuttle ride that bad.

            Thankfully, Jim had the good goddamn sense to wait for him in the hallway for once, rather than override the lock Leonard set. When Leonard finally emerged with a muttered _thank you_ , Jim just waved him off and asked, “What happened down there?”

            “You’re gonna want to sit down,” Leonard said, and then remembered this was Jim. “Or I’m the one who’s gonna want to sit down.”

            “Okay,” Jim said, and Leonard felt some small measure of relief that Jim trusted him so implicitly. It made the prospect of asking for what he was about to ask for a little less daunting. “Come on.”

            Jim led him swiftly through the halls, straight to his ready room where they could be private without being too personal. The door closed behind them and Leonard relaxed immediately at being alone. Jim crossed the room and leaned against the edge of his work desk, waiting.

            “We have a problem,” Leonard said without preamble.

            “What kind of problem?” Jim asked cautiously.

            “The kind where we’re probably going to get in a lot of trouble so we can save a lot of lives,” Leonard said, wincing a little. They’d had quite enough of that in the few years the Enterprise had been in service. At least this time it was not as widely devastating as the Narada incident, or the entire terrible debacle surrounding their encounters with Khan and Marcus.

            “Is it too late to pretend I didn’t hear that?” Jim said, looking pained.

            “This is serious, Jim,” Leonard scolded. It felt strange to be on the reckless side of the argument for once. He didn’t like it.

            Jim sighed and gave a small, resigned shake of his head. “Okay. So tell me. What happened down there?”

            For just a second, Leonard hesitated, trying to decide where exactly to start, how much Jim actually needed to know about what occurred between him and Pavel. Some of it would have to go into their written reports; some of it was probably already written down, if Pavel was filing his own right now. Jim was likely to find out, one way or another, but Leonard just didn’t have it in him to have that side of the conversation right now. It would only distract from the real problem.

            So he stuck to the basics. He told Jim about the first night there, about the dinner and how they’d learned of the white Telk through a story. He explained the differences and the dangers and as much as he knew or could figure about the situations in the other communities. He told Jim about the siita and the reservoir and plants and medicines and even tried to describe the holosuites for good measure.

            He explained that without their help, without their _immediate_ help, there was a good chance these people would be caught and killed.

            “We have to help them,” he said at last, hoping his tone conveyed exactly how urgent this entire situation was. “We gotta take them in. They got nowhere else to turn.”

            “I can’t just take on a bunch of refugees,” Jim said reluctantly, not quite looking at Leonard. “With them being a newly Federated planet, this is all going to have to go to Command and-“

            “And by the time they make a decision, it could be too late!” Leonard snapped. “Dammit, Jim, those people need our help!”

            “They need _help_ ,” Jim corrected, his tone even but still a little strained. “It doesn’t have to be ours specifically. I’m- we’re already in hot water because-“ He stopped himself, held up a hand, and let out a steadying breath. “I will relay all of this to Command,” he said carefully, “and I will push for a quick answer. But I’m not-”

            Leonard made a frustrated noise. “You’re gonna choose _now_ to get picky about being reckless? Where was this when-”

            “They aren’t in immediate danger, Bones!” Jim said, voice rising a little now. “You said yourself their colony doesn’t know they exist, so-“

            “They’re _surviving_ down there,” Leonard hissed, angry. “And you have the power to-“

            “I don’t!” Jim shouted over the top of him, slamming one hand on the table he was sitting on, and then immediately lowered his voice again as he stood up to pace. “I don’t have the power.” He made a pained face. “When they gave me the Enterprise back for our five-year commission, it came with a year’s worth of- of _probation_. We saved the damn world and they gave us all a bunch of awards and then they pulled me aside and told me in no uncertain terms that if I couldn’t follow the rules for at least a year, they’d pull my rank. None of the rest of it would matter. So no, I _don’t_.”

            Leonard stared, stomach feeling sour again at Jim’s admission. That was why Jim had chosen to follow orders instead of coming to get them, why he had left them on the planet instead of saying no to a meaningless escort mission. That was why he hadn’t braved the storm. It explained a lot about the last year except-

            “Jim…” he began. “You should have-“

            Jim waved him off, not looking directly at him. “I know. I wanted to tell you, but part of it was not telling _anyone_. I _shouldn’t_ be telling you _now_ , but we don’t need to chase our own tails all night because I didn’t say something. We need to try to help those people, so can we move on?”

            Leonard sighed, practically throwing himself into Jim’s desk chair. “Sorry,” he muttered, loud enough to know he’d be heard. He tipped his head back, staring up at the ceiling. “Okay. So you gotta talk to Command first. What are you going to tell them?”

            Scrubbing a hand over his face, Jim relaxed a little and shrugged. “I don’t know, but you’re going to sit here with me ‘til we figure it out.”

            Without waiting for a response, Jim shoved a PADD into Leonard’s hands to take notes and Leonard may have hated paperwork but Jim wasn’t about to sit still long enough to write anything down. He typed out what Jim asked him to, filled in around the edges with Jim’s own commentary, and elaborated where he could. In the end, however, they were left with a problem.

            “I’m going to call Chekov up here,” Jim said, already activating his communicator. Leonard made a noise that sounded suspiciously like the _no_ he was trying not to say, and Jim gave him a funny look. “No?”

            Leonard couldn’t stop the pained wince, knowing Jim had the scent of blood now, but also knowing he would not push the issue while they had bigger problems. “Go ahead,” he said, crankier than intended.

            Jim squinted a little, but the communicator chirruped in his hand and Chekov acknowledged. “Mr. Chekov,” Jim said, eyes fixed on Leonard’s, watching for every reaction. “Please report to my ready room immediately.”

            “Yes, sir,” came the thready response.

            Slowly, Jim replaced his communicator, eyes never leaving Leonard’s, but they both knew there was not time right now to get into what _that_ had been about. “We’re not finished,” Jim told him, matter-of-factly. “We’re going to talk about that no.”

            Leonard groaned and got out of Jim’s chair to allow him to sit, to at least give this meeting the semblance of professionalism. A second later, Pavel entered, his eyes almost slipping over Leonard to settle on the captain as he came to a halt in front of the desk. Leonard tried not to feel gutted at being ignored. He was not particularly successful.

            “Sir,” Chekov greeted, and took a seat when Jim indicated he should. Leonard took the other seat and waited for Jim to lead the conversation.

            “Dr. McCoy has caught me up on what happened down on the planet,” Jim said, watching Pavel like a hawk and even though Leonard wasn’t, he caught the flinch.

            “Which part?” Pavel asked evenly, still not even looking in Leonard’s direction.

            “There’s parts,” Jim marveled, looking to Leonard like he could not believe his luck. Leonard stifled a groan but couldn’t help his eyes rolling. “He told me that you got yourselves into some of the local trouble, with the white Telk.”

            “Yes, sir,” Pavel agreed, voice a little concerned, as if he was no longer sure of his answer, or maybe unsure of the question being asked. Maybe he’d expected Leonard would tell Jim about their personal interactions. Maybe he still thought Jim would have a negative reaction- that had been Pavel’s concern on the planet, after all.

            “Dr. McCoy believes that our best course of action is to remove the white Telk from the planet, as refugees, and request that the Federation allow us, or send someone else, to interfere on their behalf,” Jim continued. “Do you agree?”

            “Yes, sir,” Pavel repeated, shifting a little.

            “You understand, then, that I cannot take direct, immediate action, without first talking to Command about the situation?” Jim pressed.

            “Yes, sir, but-“ Pavel began.

            Jim held up a hand, forestalling him. “I intend to do that as soon as possible,” Jim assured him. “But I need some more information from you before I do. Specifically, about their technology.”

            “I can do that, sir,” Pavel said readily, that familiar, warm tinge of excitement in his tone now. Jim was giving him an opportunity to help the people he’d come to care about down on the planet. Leonard was not sure how much of that he could take right now.

            “Jim,” Leonard said, flicking his gaze toward the door.

            Glancing over, Jim caught the movement and then nodded. “Yeah, Bones, you’re dismissed. But go see M’benga before you go back to your quarters, yeah? You two were down there a while.”

            “Yeah,” Leonard agreed weakly. Pavel would already have been in, and M’benga would probably have questions Leonard didn’t want to answer. “Good night.”

            He retreated quickly, both returned goodbyes echoing in his ears as the doors slid shut behind him.

 

* * *

 

            Leonard woke, stiff and aching and cranky, sprawled naked on his couch instead of his own bed. He definitely remembered reporting to Jim, and fleeing like an adult when Pavel arrived and ignored him. However, he only vaguely remembered turning up at sickbay and letting M’benga scan him, but he didn’t remember any questions. He must have taken a quick sonic shower as soon as he got back to his quarters, and then passed out on the couch before reaching his bed.

            Not a great combination of events, especially considering how his body currently protested movement. Still, his comm had beeped from across the room to alert him he had a shift to work, so he clambered to his feet. He quickly located a clean uniform, too restrictive now after living in the flowing Telk garments, and headed down to the mess.

            Coffee.

            Sweet, sweet, bitter coffee.

            The scent of it hit him as soon as the mess door swished open, and he headed straight for the nearest replimat to get the biggest cup it would allow. The computer chirruped affirmation of his order and a moment later the cubby door swung open to reveal a mug of piping hot liquid. There was a time Leonard might have complained about replicated coffee, but today was not that day.

            Wrapping his hands carefully around the hot mug, he crossed the room, greeting the crew members along the way that welcomed him back. He assumed their happiness at seeing him would only last until he saw them again in sickbay. He turned to the sound of his name called in a pleasant tone, and found Nyota smiling at him.

            “Back on duty already?” she asked with a curious tip of her head. He could see the disapproval in her smile, though, and knew if he said the wrong thing, he would probably get an earful. Or Jim would, and then Leonard would get one anyway.

            “No reason not to be,” he told her, aiming for charming but landing in just-woke-up. He remembered what Jim had told him the first evening. “That rock was practically a vacation.”

            Her smile relaxed into a genuine one as she nodded. “It’s good to have you back.”

            “It’s good to be back,” he lied as he turned and slid into his seat to enjoy his liquid breakfast.

            “Doctor,” said a familiar, if confused, voice, and Leonard froze.

            Looking up, he realized he had been so focused on holding his cup, and on acknowledging the crew along the way, that he had moved to sit with Pavel on autopilot. For a second he just stared, mouth open a little, brain going so fast it was blank. He had expected he would have to see Pavel again, and probably soon given their situation with rescuing the white Telk, but not this soon.

            But it would look weird if he bolted just after sitting down, so he dropped his gaze and mumbled: “Morning, Lieutenant,” and took a drink to avoid having to say anything else immediately. The liquid scalded over his tongue and down his throat and he barely managed to keep from spluttering.

            Great work, he thought irritably. Really knocking ‘casual’ out of the park.

            Pavel watched him with scrunched brows for a moment, and then turned back to his breakfast without another word. Heart thick in his chest, Leonard waited a few more seconds to see if Pavel had anything further to say, but he didn’t so much as glance up at Leonard again.

            Leonard kept his sigh to himself.

            Without outside pressure, it seemed that they were going to have a difficult time interacting on even a civil basis. Leonard hated it, but he didn’t know how to change it; Pavel had done nothing wrong, and neither had he. Not down on the planet, and certainly not here on the ship. There was nothing and no one to yell at, so he yelled at himself.

            “’M sorry,” he grumbled after another drink. “About bolting yesterday.”

            Pavel glanced up, brilliant eyes flicking over Leonard’s face for a second, and then back down to his plate. “It is fine, Doctor. You had to speak to the Captain.”

            Brow knitting, Leonard straightened up a little. “Not _that_ quick, I didn’t,” he said. “I’m just… not good with flying on a good day, and that was a bad storm.” Pavel looked up again, longer this time, assessing him, and Leonard fidgeted under the stare, trying to come up with something, _anything_ to say to escape this awkward feeling. “Just- just wanted to say thanks. For gettin’ us home safe.”

            “It was my job,” Pavel said simply.

            _You did what you had to do._

            His own words rattled around in his skull, and he nodded stiffly. “Yeah,” he agreed, even and dull. “Well, thanks, anyway.”

            Without further ado, Leonard retreated for the safety of his sickbay.

 

* * *

 

            The relative safety of his sickbay, Leonard thought later that day as Pavel walked through the doors, trailed by one worried head engineer. Bones frowned and looked over to where Christine was busy with taking vitals on an ensign with a cough, and decided he couldn’t pass Pavel to anyone else. Even if he could have, Scotty was already looking dead at him and talking.

            “-shouldn’t have been fussing with the panel ‘til I had time to-“

            “Thank you,” Leonard interrupted, walking with them to the nearest biobed. “I’ll take it from here. Make sure the Captain is informed before shift’s end though, will you?”

            “Aye, sir,” Scotty said, giving one last, concerned look to Pavel, who smiled bleakly back. “I’ll do that. Don’t you worry, laddie, Doc here’ll get you patched up in no time. Good as new.”

            “I know,” Pavel said, not even looking at Leonard.

            Leonard grabbed the closest tricorder from nearby, and then motioned for Pavel to extend his hands for examination. “Let’s see, then. What happened?”

            “I burned my hands,” Pavel said, like it should have been obvious. It _was_ obvious, and they both knew that’s not what Leonard was asking.

            “You’re usually more careful with your hands,” Leonard said, immediately regretting how it sounded. He cleared his throat. “After that first time, I mean. When you burned one of them.” Yet another reason to hate deep space- nowhere to bury himself in a hole when his mouth refused to communicate with his brain first.

            “I was distracted,” Pavel said, flinching when Leonard moved one of his hands to begin scanning.

            Leonard moved the nodule a couple of times, letting the tricorder scan each hand in turn, but the damage was not nearly as deep as the first time he’d come in for burns. These ones were all superficial burns, easily fixed with a regenerator. The worst was at his fingertips, which had probably been closest to whatever he’d been fiddling with.

            “You’ll live,” he announced, setting the tricorder on the biobed next to Pavel and leaning to grab a dermal regenerator from one of the nearby drawers. “Those fingertips’ll need a second round, so you’ll have to come back tomorrow. Hold still.”

            Pavel held statue-still as Leonard ran the regenerator over his skin. While science had provided them a way to mend flesh immediately and almost scarlessly, it had not found a way to do so _painlessly_. Normally Leonard took comfort in that fact; any time some idiot came in with a minor injury for doing something they should have had the sense not to do, Leonard hoped that a couple minutes of intensely painful, itchy healing would remind them not to do it again.

            This time, however, he wished he had a way to ease the pain. Seeing the squint in Pavel’s features, the clench of his jaw against crying out, made Leonard ache to fix it for him.

            Instead, he said: “You should be more careful, darlin’,” and nearly bit his own tongue off closing his mouth too late to stop the endearment from slipping out.

            At the word, Pavel’s gaze dragged up and he met Leonard’s eyes for a second before gently tugging his hand from Leonard’s grasp. “You do not need to say such things here, Doctor.”

            It was on the tip of his tongue to say _but I want to_ , but he’d put his foot in his mouth enough times today and was not keen on doing so again. “Sorry,” he said instead, and held his hand out for Pavel’s again, not yet finished with the regenerator.

            Pavel didn’t replace his hand, just hopped off the edge of the bed and lightly tapped his fingers together to test the durability of his healing skin. “I think that is enough,” he said. “I will return tomorrow if it is not.”

            “Hey,” Leonard said, catching Pavel’s attention with a step toward him. “Now hang on a minute. At least put a bandage on so you don’t muss ‘em up.”

            Before Pavel could protest or bolt, Leonard grabbed a spray from the closest drawer and held it out to Pavel to take, so he could get away if he wanted. Even if Pavel was ready to suffer rather than let Leonard touch him a moment longer, Leonard wasn’t going to let him. He was a better doctor than that.

            Pavel eyed him for a long few seconds and then raised his hands and presented them for Leonard to treat. Leonard stood there, not sure if the gesture was really permission until Pavel twitched his hands to prompt him to continue.

            Carefully, gently, Leonard took one of Pavel’s hands and sprayed the liquid bandage over his skin. It coalesced, knitting together and spreading out into an almost imperceptibly thin barrier between Pavel’s healing skin and anything which could scuff or irritate it. He did the same for Pavel’s other hand and when he finished, he let go immediately.

            When he chanced a glance up at Pavel again, Leonard was met with a confused gaze that cleared quickly. “Thank you,” Pavel said, voice a little rough.

            Leonard nodded, throat too thick to say anything else, and watched as Pavel walked swiftly out of sickbay.

            So much for not making a mess, he thought.

 

* * *

 

            Leonard lay on top of his bed, on top of the covers, staring blankly up at the ceiling. He missed the soft Telk beds. He missed the warm baths in real water. He missed food that tasted like anything he craved. But most of all, he missed the comfort of having someone else curled up beside him, even breathing filling the room, a heartbeat under his fingertips as he fell asleep.

            He closed his eyes and blew out a breath.

            Some part of him knew that this was his own fault, for letting things get out of hand when he had known a little while would never be enough. But the rest of him knew that he would do it again- he would lose Pavel a thousand times over if it meant getting to have him at all, even just for a little while.

            He had hoped for more. He had let himself hope that maybe if he was good and sweet and kind, if he just loved Pavel enough, that Pavel would love him back. He had let himself believe it when Pavel had said they were friends.

            Clearly, that was not the case. Pavel could barely look at him, could barely say two words at a time to him, and he used those words to tell Leonard to back off.

            Across the room, his door chimed.

            Leonard covered his eyes with one arm. It was probably Jim- no one else would come to see him this long after his shift. Leonard waited for the telltale beep of the lock being overridden, the sound of the door swishing open when Jim decided he’d waited long enough to be polite barging in.

            Leonard wasn’t sure when, but he fell asleep waiting.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After several false starts, I finally got this chapter to go. A special thanks to Nella_Paulina for your sexy dancing in the comments, I definitely worked harder to get this out after that giggle! ^_~


	18. The Other Side

* * *

 

            Pavel’s fingers tapped over the controls, adjusting the course and watching Hikaru follow suit as the navigation updated on his console. Every tap of Pavel’s fingers sent a little tingle down them, into his palms, reminding him of yesterday’s injury and how he had been unable to even remain in the same room as Leonard. Not after Leonard had fled from him in the shuttle bay. Not after Leonard had fled from him again at breakfast, sitting only long enough to say thank you.

            Not after the way Leonard had called him _darlin’_ like everything was fine.

            Everything was definitely _not_ fine.

            Last night, Pavel had gone to Leonard’s room, confused and hurting and wanting to talk about this, just once. He knew Leonard was there, but the door had never opened. Leonard had not even acknowledged him enough to tell him to go away over the room comm. After a little while he had given up, and gone back to his own quarters to attempt to sleep.

            He had been wholly unsuccessful, tossing and turning, unable to quiet his mind. Eventually, sometime around 0300, he had just gotten up and gone to sit in the sonic shower stall with a PADD, as far as he could get from his bed without leaving his room. At least there were no water baths here to remind him of his time on the planet.

            Pavel contained a frustrated groan and closed his eyes for a count of three, hoping to drag his focus back to the present, but he was _tired_.

            “Everything okay, Lieutenant Chekov?” came the Captain’s voice from behind him.

            “Yes, sir,” Pavel answered automatically, straightening like the words had shoved a rod into his spine.

            Even though his back had been to the captain for the entire shift, he could feel Kirk’s eyes on him. He knew he was being watched, _had_ to be being watched, but so far the captain had made no move to interact beyond the general business of the day. Pavel wondered if the captain was thinking about Leonard as much as Pavel was.

            Once again, Pavel dragged his thoughts away from mining that particular vein. Although the captain had in no way indicated how he felt about what happened between Pavel and Leonard on the planet, he had to know. If anything, the captain seemed more like he was concerned _for_ Pavel, which left him feeling uneasy. At least if Kirk said something, anything, Pavel would know where he stood.

            He would at least, some small part of him whispered, know that what happened meant _something_ , but the captain was acting as if nothing at all had happened.

            Maybe that was all it had been. Nothing at all.

            Behind him, the turbolift doors opened with a soft _shhff_ that Pavel barely noticed. He also did not notice the absolute silence of the newcomer’s hesitation, frozen with one foot out the door. What he did notice, however, was the voice that accompanied the new arrival.

            “Jim,” Leonard growled, cranky and sharp. “You’re gonna want to call your First back to the bridge before I send him up here in pieces.”

            “He’s just doing his job, Bones,” Jim replied, in the way that said they had done this song and dance many times.

            “Hovering around my med bay is not his job!” Leonard clipped.

            Pavel did not need to look- he could hear the eyeroll in the captain’s tone. “Okay, then he’s just trying to get you to do _your_ job.”

            “My job!” Pavel heard the sharp sound of Leonard’s shoes as he rounded the consoles to get at the captain. He just barely caught sight of Leonard from the corner of his eye as he passed, but all of his nerves lit up just to be so close. “My _job_ , Jim, is to treat the ill, which I can’t do with that much nuisance standing exactly where I need to be!”

            “Your _job_ is to finish writing your away mission report,” Jim said evenly. Pavel risked looking over to share a glance with Hikaru, as they often did when these two got into it, and he managed to see the way Leonard loomed over the captain. “Preferably the same day you return, but acceptably the day after. Which was yesterday. You know how he gets about deadlines and rules.”

            Leonard roughed a noise of disgust in the back of his throat and straightened. “Lord, I never thought I would say this, but you could teach that rotten bastard a thing or two about patience. Get him out of my med bay, Jim. I ain’t kiddin’. You come by later and I’ll get you that report, but I got too much to do ‘til then.”

            Pavel cringed inside, aching at hearing Leonard’s easy, open invitation directed at the captain, his accent the sort of thick that said he was angry enough he did not care who heard it as long as the captain got the message. Pavel would have given anything to hear that drawl again, but not like this. Not given to someone else.

            Behind Pavel, the intercom dragged him out of his thoughts with a polite noise. “Commander Spock,” the captain said, so officially that Pavel knew he was throwing the words at Leonard rather than talking to his first officer. “Please return to the bridge.”

            “Captain,” came the immediate response. “You requested I remain in the medical bay until Dr. McCoy completed-“

            “I know what I requested,” the captain interrupted, and Pavel knew the triumphant smile that accompanied that tone. “And now I’m requesting you return to the bridge.”

            There was a short pause, and then: “Yes, sir.”

            “Oh, shut up,” the captain said as soon as the comm chirruped off, and Pavel could envision the exact unimpressed face Leonard was making at having confirmation that the captain had ordered Mr. Spock to interfere with his day. “You’re still getting that report done tonight.”

            Pavel listened to the absence of sound as the two senior officers stared at one another, and then Leonard was passing by Pavel again, heading for the exit. Turning his head a little, Pavel listened until he heard the swish of the turbolift doors opening and then closing before he let out his breath.

            To his left, Hikaru tapped out _U  o-k?_ in morse code on the console with one finger. Pavel had taught it to him only a week after they met.

            _N-o_ , he tapped back. _T-a-l-k?_

            _O-k_ , Hikaru answered, and then turned back to his console, quickly scanning over the ship’s path.

            Pavel turned back as well, his veritable storm of conflicting emotions rapidly becoming a hindrance to his ability to perform his duties. He had promised that this would not happen, and yet here he was, staring through his console instead of at it. Spending his entire shift aching to do something about his broken heart. Wanting to stay, wanting to go, wanting just… _something_ different than this uncertainty.

            He wished he had never gone down to that planet.

            He wished they had never left it.

            But they had, and this was what they had left, all that _he_ had left, and he was going to have to just deal with it as best as he could. With a sigh, he shoved his tangle of thoughts to the back of his mind and redoubled his efforts to concentrate on his work.

 

* * *

 

            As soon as his shift had ended, Pavel had bolted from the bridge. The turbolift doors had closed on both Hikaru and the captain, but Pavel had not tried to stop it. The captain would have had too many questions Pavel did not want to answer, and Hikaru would have had a lot of the same questions that Pavel did not want to answer within earshot of the captain. So he had bolted, and when the turbolift doors opened, he had bolted again, until he was certain that anyone following him would have to know where he was going in order to find him.

            Luckily, Hikaru was his best friend, and knew that he would head for the mess instead of his own quarters, or even Hikaru’s. If he grabbed food first, then he could beat the dinner rush for the replicators, and take his food back to his room so he would not have to leave again.

            “You could have at least _pretended_ you weren’t running away,” Hikaru said when he caught up to Pavel at the entrance to the mess. “You know, Kirk asked me what was wrong with you.”

            Pavel’s step faltered. “What did you tell him?”

            “That you were pining over your love for the doctor,” Hikaru said, jumping back when Pavel went to smack his arm for teasing. He laughed.

            “I am not _pining_ ,” Pavel grumbled, stepping in front of Hikaru to access the best replicator first. “What did you really tell him?”

            Shrugging, Hikaru moved to the closest replicator. He had never been picky about his food. “What do you think? He told me I should talk to you, like I wasn’t going to anyway.”

            Pavel suddenly found he was not very hungry, stomach turning over at the reminder that Leonard had clearly not told the captain about what happened on the planet. Although Pavel had followed Leonard’s suggestion and excluded most details of their personal interactions from his mission report, most was not _all._ When the captain did get around to reading the report, he would be able to put two and two together.

            “Hey,” Hikaru said, soft, as he nudged at Pavel’s arm with his tray. “Enterprise to Pavel… come on.”

            Looking up, Pavel realized he had just been standing there with his tray, lost in his worries once again. He shook his head as if that could clear the thoughts, and allowed Hikaru to steer him to the table in the far corner of the mess. No one liked to sit in this partially secluded area unless they had secrets to share, an unspoken rule that was generally respected by the rest of the crew.

            “We don’t have to talk about it,” Hikaru offered as they took their seats.

            “I want to,” Pavel said quickly. “I just… do not know what to say. I am not happy like this. I thought perhaps I could avoid him, but even when I am not near him, my thoughts are with him. I burned my hands because I was too distracted thinking of him. Yesterday, he sat across from me at breakfast like nothing had changed. When I was hurt, he spoke sweetly. Yet, today he came to the bridge, and he would not even look at me.”

            Hikaru raised both eyebrows as Pavel ducked his head and blushed. “Sounds to me like you said it pretty well.”

            Pavel gave a frustrated sigh, poking at his food with his fork. “I do not know what to do, Hikaru. I cannot go back, and I cannot move forward.”

            “Have you considered, I don’t know, actually talking to him?”

            “I tried,” Pavel spat, far more bitterly than he expected. He tried to sound softer. “I went to his quarters last night. I waited a few minutes, and a few more, and a few more. I know he was inside, but he never answered. I believe he does not wish to speak to me.”

            Hikaru frowned. “As hot as he runs, I don’t think he’d just ignore you, Pavel,” he said, firm and reassuring. “Look, you said he sat with you at breakfast, right? So he clearly doesn’t hate you.”

            “He just wants to be friends only,” Pavel said, picking at his synthesized bread. “I do not know if I can be friends anymore, not like before.”

            With a sigh, Hikaru reached across the small table to put his hand over Pavel’s until Pavel looked up at him. “Do you _want_ to be? I mean, if you can’t have him how you really want, would you rather be friends than nothing, or would you rather be nothing than even friends?”

            Pavel stared down at Hikaru’s hand over his, the warmth of it seeping into his skin. He remembered how holding Leonard’s hand had felt, soft and sure. He knew he wanted that. He knew he wanted more than that, more than whatever they had now. He wanted to be allowed to hold Leonard’s hand, kiss his lips, touch and be touched, hear his own name said so gently it broke him.

            But did he want to be _friends_? He had gotten so strung up on whether or not he _could_ be just friends, that he had not considered if that was even something he _wanted_.

            He was not sure, but the thought of cutting off all contact with Leonard left a bad taste in his mouth. He knew that he did not want to be _nothing_ to Leonard, to have _nothing_ with him at all. They had been through too much together for that. They still had too much to do, outside of themselves. He swallowed thickly and dragged his gaze up to meet Hikaru’s.

            “I would rather be friends than nothing,” he admitted quietly, and Hikaru released his hands with a nod.

            “Okay, then,” Hikaru said, acknowledging the decision like it included him as well. “Then you’re going to have to treat him like he’s your friend. You’re going to have to treat _yourself_ like you’re his friend, too. That means not panicking if he doesn’t answer his door. It means the next time you see him, you ask if you can talk, and you tell him that you want to be friends.”

            The word was beginning to leave a bitter taste in Pavel’s mouth. Friends. But Hikaru was correct; he would rather be friends with Leonard than act like strangers. This awkward in-between was unacceptable, and Pavel knew he could not stand many more days of it. At least if he got a chance to talk it through with Leonard, maybe they could lay it to rest, and move forward.

            “You are right, again,” Pavel told his friend, offering up as best a smile as he could muster. “I will speak to him. Perhaps I will see him again tomorrow at breakfast.”

            “There you go,” Hikaru said, smiling back. “I’m sure it’s going to be fine.”

            Pavel hummed a note of agreement he did not really feel, and turned his attention to his meal, trying not to think about what he had just agreed to do. Hikaru did not ask any more questions about Leonard, but he did give Pavel space to think by chattering about the plants they had brought back with them.

            “Do you want to come see?” he asked as they returned their trays to the recycler.

            “Yes,” Pavel said, a little surprised to find it was true. Hikaru had been spending nearly all of his free time figuring out how to speak to the plants. He had even, this morning as their shift began, pulled Nyota aside to ask her if she could help him work out if the plants had a language or only reacted to stimuli. It would not be the first time Hikaru had found sentient plant life.

            They quickly made their way down to the botany lab. Hikaru pulled out the device he had built to show colors to the plants, and began flipping through the patterns he had established. The plants lit up and began answering immediately, and Pavel recognized the shifting. On a Telk, it would have been excitement, or enthusiasm.

            “They like you,” he said, smiling. “The Telk would change this way, too, when they were excited. Very fast and sharp.”

            “Yeah?” Hikaru asked, brightening at the news. “You think they’re excited?”

            “Maybe,” Pavel said good-naturedly. “If not, then they can mimic it. That is perhaps more interesting. I wonder, what would a plant raised among humans do? If they speak, what do you think they would have to say?”

            Hikaru laughed. “I barely know what these ones are saying.” He gestured at the device vaguely. “I don’t even really know what _I’m_ saying. I’m mostly tapping out colors and charting how they respond. But I think I’ll be able to do more when Nyota comes down here. Maybe you could sit in?” he asked, giving Pavel a hopeful look. “You said you learned what some of the colors meant.”

            “I would love to,” Pavel said, genuinely interested. Maybe it would help them in some way, to learn how to communicate in color changing. “Perhaps it will help us teach the translators how to speak the Telk language.”

            “That’s the hope,” Hikaru admitted, a little shyly. “The plants are great, but I really wanted to help you save your friends. I don’t know if it will do any good, but I had to try.”

            Pavel’s heart gave a little leap twist of happiness, and he could not help but pull Hikaru into a hug. “Thank you,” he said earnestly. He could not have wished for a better best friend, he thought as he moved back.

            “Of course,” Hikaru said with a grin. “Now shouldn’t you be off to bed soon? Early morning and all?”

            Pavel refrained from making a face, but only because he had been about to excuse himself anyway. “Yes, I should,” he agreed. “You are supposed to wish me luck.”

            “Good luck,” Hikaru said, still grinning. “And good night.”

            “Good night,” Pavel told him, heading toward the exit.

            The door to the botany lab swished closed behind him a moment later, and Pavel found himself just standing in the hall, unable to pick a direction. He knew where he _should_ go. If he had any sense, he would go to his own room. He would go to sleep, and get up early to talk to Leonard after they were both well rested, when he would have the excuse of needing to get to his post if things went poorly. He _should_.

            A few minutes later, he stood outside of Leonard’s door, staring at the seam as if he could just will it to open without having to ask for permission. It did not.

            It was silly of him to be there, of course it was silly, and yet he could not drag his feet to walk in another direction. He just stood there, useless worry churning in his mind, repeating possible starts to the conversation he wanted to have, and all the brilliant responses he knew would flee him the second he needed them.

            He should leave. He should go back to his own room.

            He raised his hand to the entrance request pad.

            “Hey, Pavel,” came a familiar voice to his left. He closed his eyes for a second, cursing internally as he dropped his hand before turning to face the captain. Pavel ignored the hot twinge in his gut to see the captain dressed in casual clothing instead of his command uniform. “You’re up late. Everything ok?”

            No, Pavel thought, but he forced a smile anyway. “Yes, sir.”

            For a few seconds, they stood in awkward silence, before the captain cleared his throat. “So… uh, did you need to talk to Bones? I can come back. I just wanted to pick up his report,” he said, wiggling the PADD in his hand. Pavel noticed the bottle of alcohol in his other hand, and his belly sank again. This was definitely not just a business meeting.

            “No,” he said, shaking his head for emphasis. “You should get his report. It is important for helping the Telk, yes?”

            “Yes,” the captain agreed, giving him a funny look. “You know, you could help, if you wanted to stay. I’m sure Bones wouldn’t mind.”

            Pavel swallowed and shook his head again. “It is best if I do not. I think you will agree, when you read his report. He does not particularly want to see me.”

            “Me either,” the captain said with a grin. “In fact, I bet he wants to see me even less than he wants to see you, but between you and me… well, he’s stubborn. Sometimes you just gotta be more stubborn, to get what you want.”

            “I see,” Pavel granted, stepping back from the door, mind buzzing. He knew the captain had to be talking about getting Leonard’s report from him, but Pavel could not shake the feeling that he was trying to give Pavel advice relevant to his own situation. Like he knew. Like he wanted Pavel to know that he knew. “I should get back to my quarters.”

            “Okay,” the captain said, sounding a little… disappointed. “Good night, Pavel.”

            “Good night, Captain,” he replied, and all but bolted for the safety of his own room.

            So much for not making a mess.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are. Two more chapters, one of which is an epilogue... I am very, very excited but also very sad that this is almost over! Let's get ready for that happy ending!!


	19. The Happy Ending

 

 

           

            Leonard ignored the first beeps to his door comm, sure that it was Jim again, here for the report Leonard had actually written the same night they returned. Logically, he knew that he had to turn it in sometime. He even knew that the scant details he had provided wouldn’t be new; there was nothing in Leonard’s report that he hadn’t already said or that wouldn’t have been in Pavel’s. In fact, there was probably less personal information in Leonard’s, as he had more experience avoiding telling the entire truth on paper.

            The door chimed again, and then again faster, and Leonard sighed, tipping his head back against the couch and closing his eyes. There was no way Jim would walk away two nights in a row, so it was only a matter of time before he let himself in.

            Sure enough, the door hissed open a few seconds later, and Leonard heard the tap of Jim’s boots crossing the room. There was a fragile clack as something glass met his coffee table and a moment later a PADD hit Leonard in the chest.

            Opening his eyes, he caught the PADD with one hand before it could slide to the floor. “Asshole,” he groused as Jim came to a halt in front of him. Leonard followed the line of Jim’s body up, up, up to his scowl. “I already finished the damn report, you know.”

            “I know,” Jim said with a little roll of his eyes. “I got it off your PADD yesterday.”

            At this point, Leonard couldn’t even be surprised by that, though his heart did pick up at the realization. If Jim had read his report, if he’d read Pavel’s as well, then there was only one reason he was storming into Leonard’s room this late at night. “Well?” he said, more than a little dourly.

            “Well?” Jim echoed incredulously. “Geezus, Bones. You’ve gotta talk to _somebody_ about what happened down there.”

            Leonard flopped back onto the couch again. “It’s all in the report. There’s nothing to talk about,” he told him, not able to meet his gaze through the very obvious lie.

            “There’s nothing you _want_ to talk about,” Jim corrected, stubbornly not sitting. That was never a good sign. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to talk.”

            “How about this- I’m not _going_ to talk,” Leonard tried instead. He’d run himself in enough circles over Pavel, he didn’t need Jim’s help.

            “That’s fine,” Jim said, and his tone had the back of Leonard’s neck prickling as he was reminded that Jim had a predator’s instincts when it came to getting what he wanted. “Then I’ll do the talking and you can just listen.”

            “Jim,” Leonard argued hotly, because he wasn’t prey. He didn’t have to talk about this just because Jim was nosy. “It’s none-”

            “Here’s my problem, Bones,” Jim continued over the top of him, and Leonard could hear now that he wasn’t just angry. That tone was laced with hurt, and for an instant Bones felt guilty for not telling him. “You told me what happened down on that planet, and you ask me to jeopardize my position by using it to save people. Ok, I get that. Here’s what I don’t get- when I tell Chekov you’ve told me the story, he asks what part. What _part_. Your story didn’t have parts. I read your report _and_ his, and neither of those had parts, either.”

            “Jim, I-” Leonard began, a little softer because Jim had obviously sussed out something had happened, to some degree, and was upset- not because it happened, but because Leonard hadn’t told him. Yelling about it would only make it worse.

            “So now I gotta wonder, what’s the other part?” Jim interrupted. “What part of the mission would the both of you leave out of an official report? What mission details would you leave out, unofficially, in person? What would you keep from _me_?”

            Leonard dropped his eyes, jaw clenched; they both knew the answer.

            “But you two didn’t leave out anything about the mission,” Jim concluded aloud for him, not taking his eyes off of Leonard. “Which means it was _personal_. And the only _personal_ information that _both_ of you would keep secret would be… if you finally said something. Told him.”

            Leonard was silent for a moment, and Jim just let him, standing in a way that said he’d wait there all night unless he got an explanation. Finally, Leonard looked up and met Jim’s steely gaze. “I didn’t want to keep anything from you,” he said quietly.

            Jim’s eyes softened even if his posture didn’t. “The road to hell, Bones.”

            “Says the man who didn’t tell me he was on probation for a year,” Leonard said, not proud of the way Jim stiffened at the jab. He knew he was hitting below the belt, but he didn’t take it back.

            “Because I could have lost my job,” Jim reminded him hotly.

            “Yeah, well, so could I,” Leonard said back, hoping Jim was as sharp as he was playing. “I didn’t just _tell him_ , Jim.”

            “What do you-” Jim stopped cold, eyes flickering over Leonard, putting all the pieces together. Leonard saw the exact moment Jim recognized the puzzle. “You actually had sex with him,” Jim said, not a question but not an accusation, either. “On a mission.” When Bones didn’t answer, Jim finally flopped down on the stiff couch beside him, all of the fight draining out of him. “Geezus, Bones. Talk about bad timing.”

            “I know,” Leonard said, because he didn’t need to be told what a mess they’d made, or how much trouble they would be in now that Jim knew.

            “What a mess,” Jim echoed, like he could hear Leonard’s thoughts.

            “I _know_ ,” he growled. It didn’t matter that they’d been stranded there, or that their actions had, to some extent, been a measure of survival. They’d technically been on duty then, and they still had to work with each other now, nevermind the side-effect of emotional damage.

            “And I take it by the way he wouldn’t even look at you on the bridge today, that you haven’t talked about it. You should probably figure out what you’re gonna do…” Leonard didn’t have to look over to see Jim’s sudden grin, all the ire from earlier gone, just like that. “Or maybe I should say _who_ you’re gonna-“

            “You’re not helping,” Leonard groaned. This was at least half the reason he hadn’t told Jim anything yet. “What happened down there… with us…” He waved a hand vaguely, knowing Jim would get it.

            “But now that you’re back here-”

            “Nothing is going to happen here, Jim,” Leonard assured him.

            Jim was quiet a moment, quiet enough that Leonard shifted to look over at him. When their eyes met, Jim’s brows rose a little. His voice was soft, tentative in a way Jim Kirk rarely was. “It could, you know. If you wanted to work it out with him, you could. It’d be good for both of you.”

            “It can’t happen,” Leonard sighed, looking away again. “Even if he felt the same way I do, I’m pretty sure someone would have something to say about it.”

            “Sure they would,” Jim agreed. “But who cares? They can say whatever they want. There aren’t any regs about intracrew relationships. Not ones that prohibit them, anyway.”

            Leonard turned back to squint at Jim. “And how would you know?” He was pretty sure Jim hadn’t been in a relationship longer than a few days since Leonard had met him.

            “Because I looked them up. The rules. At the Academy, when I-” His throat caught and Leonard noticed the faint, embarrassed flush on Jim’s cheeks, and damned if he’d never seen _that_ before. “When I thought you and I were going to be assigned to the same ship, I looked up the rules. Just in case. And then… you know.”

            Leonard, in fact, did not know. He had never known that. “Jim…” he said, not sure what could possibly serve as a good enough answer to that sort of confession.

            But Jim just waved a hand, dismissing it all. “Anyway, that’s old news, Bones,” he said, the words more flippant than his tone, and Leonard guessed it probably was not as old of news as Jim would like him to believe. Still, he let it go without a word. “I’ve got my eye on someone else now.”

            “Oh really?” Leonard said dryly.

            “Yep,” Jim agreed, sounding much more like himself now. “Turns out, I like my men a little less red-blooded than you.”

            “Oh,” Leonard groaned, pulling a face as he said it. “Oh, that is not an image I needed, Jim. Though I can’t say I’m surprised in the least, the way you two act.”

            Jim snorted, but he didn’t argue, and Leonard figured they’d had more than enough confessing to things in the last couple of days, so he kept his mouth shut too. They sat quietly together, their thoughts shouting more than loudly enough to fill the silence. Finally, Jim shifted and plucked the PADD from Leonard’s grasp to set it on the table next to the one already there.

            “You know, you still have to get your report actually turned in,” he reminded Leonard. “For the record, it’s good that you left out all the… you know. Sex parts. With Pavel. All the-“

            Leonard shoved him with one foot to get him to shut up, and Jim laughed, but stopped. “It’s there,” Leonard told him, motioning vaguely at his own PADD next to the one Jim had brought. “You can take it with you when you go.”

            “Thank you,” Jim said, picking up Leonard’s PADD as he got to his feet. He hesitated, then turned to face Leonard. “You know… I think you should give it a shot with Pavel, just in case, he… well, at least talk to him before you just give up.”

            “Believe me, he doesn’t want to talk to me,” Leonard said, shaking his head, heart twisting up at the reminder. “Just leave it alone, will you?”

            Leonard couldn’t interpret the look Jim gave him, not until it melted into calm, smug amusement. “It’s funny,” Jim said, ignoring Leonard’s previous statement entirely. “You and him.”

            “It’s not funny, Jim” Leonard said tiredly.

            “It’s a little funny, _Bones_ ,” Jim argued. “And it would be good, too, right? Because space is your worst nightmare, and this guy’s spent his whole life learning how to get through it safely. It’s kind of… a perfect fit.

            Jim’s voice had taken _that tone_ , and Leonard got to his feet to herd Jim toward the door. “Don’t say it,” Leonard warned when Jim opened his mouth. “Do not say what I think you’re about to say.”

            “You could say it’s a _match made in heaven_ ,” Jim said anyway as Leonard opened the door and all but shoved him through it. “Or I guess, _the_ _heavens_.”

            “I swear to God-”

            “It’s _written in the stars_ , Bones!” The door hissed shut on Jim’s laughter, and Leonard thumbed the lock, knowing damn well it wouldn’t actually stop Jim if he wanted back in. “Bones!”

            He sighed, closing his eyes and waiting to hear Jim’s footsteps leaving. They didn’t. Maybe he was waiting for Leonard to walk away first, and that was why they had both ended up here. What a pair they made, he thought.

            “Hey, Bones?” Jim said, just loudly enough to be heard through the door, if Bones stood as close as he was standing. Jim knew him too well. “I know you’re still there, so just… you know. Think about it, for real. You were stuck on a planet full of lie detectors for over a week. _Both_ of you. Do you really think _both_ of you fooled them that well, for that long?” Jim slapped the door in much the same way as he clapped Leonard’s shoulder, the sound of skin on metal filtering through the door. “Just think about that, okay?”

            Then his footsteps were receding down the hall, and Leonard shook his head. Jim was wrong. He had to be wrong, didn’t he? Leonard asked himself. Because if he wasn’t… if Jim wasn’t wrong, then that meant Leonard had made a very, very big mistake.

 

* * *

 

            Leonard’s alarm woke him, its annoying jangle cutting through the sleep he swore he’d only just begun. He had lain awake most of the night, turning over in his head what he would say to Pavel when he sought him out after shift. Confessions, excuses, explanations… there had been more than one scenario that involved pleading. In the end he had dismissed all of them and at some point he had drifted off, with no better idea what to say than when he’d started.

            He slapped a hand on the alarm, shushing it, and then tossed his other arm over his eyes. It was going to be a long day. He laid still for a few more seconds, letting the silence ring in his ears, before heaving himself into a semblance of upright. He had things to do before shift, like getting coffee, and getting coffee. Maybe food. Definitely coffee. _Real_ coffee. He ran a hand through his hair, and ambled to the bathroom, first.

            The sonics on the ship were a poor substitute for the warm water baths he’d been privileged to down on the planet, so he didn’t bother to linger with his thoughts. He would just have to say what seemed right, at the time. He was a doctor, dammit. He had experience explaining difficult situations to people that stood to be hurt.

            He stared his reflection in the eyes, wondering what Pavel would see in them.

            He just hoped it was enough to forgive him.

            Shoving away from the sink, he dressed quickly, grabbed his comm from the bedside table, and headed out to fetch coffee before shift began.

            Usually Leonard came down to the mess hall early, when the tables still had folks around them, chatting amiably among themselves. He rarely actually ate a full breakfast, but he found that if he sat at the edge of the room, sometimes people that were nervous to fuss with going to sickbay would approach him to ask medical questions off the record.

            Today he arrived late, during those last few minutes before alpha shift, when alpha-shift members with any sense had left to their posts, and gamma-shift had yet to arrive from them. He had just started to hope he might have a few more minutes to himself to think too much, when his gaze landed on one of the few people left.

            Pavel.

            He sat across from Sulu, elbows on the table and his long fingers wrapped around a cup of coffee. Leonard didn’t have time to hope he had not been spotted- their eyes met as soon as Leonard noticed Pavel’s presence.

            He swallowed thickly, and turned toward the closest replicator, hands trembling a little as he programmed his favorite brew.

            “Leonard.”

            Leonard closed his eyes, and the replicator in front of him beeped, the door whisking open with a little whoosh. “Good morning, Pavel,” he said softly, unwilling to force distance between them with titles.

            “Can I… Can I please speak with you?”

            “I have to get to sickbay,” Leonard said, regretting it the second the words were out of his mouth. He _did_ want to talk about this. “Soon, I- I have to go soon. Sure, we can talk now,” he amended, turning to face Pavel.

            “I am sorry,” Pavel said, and that was the last thing Leonard expected to hear from him right now. “I told you that there would be no mess when we returned home, but I have not done very well keeping that promise. I have been avoiding you, because I…” He looked down, trailing off.

            “It’s fine, Pavel,” Leonard said softly, giving in to his desire to touch Pavel’s shoulder, drawing his attention up. “I’ve been doin’ a little avoiding, myself.”

            “I know,” Pavel breathed, obviously trying not to sound hurt and failing. “And I do not want that, Len. I do not want to avoid you. I _want_ to be friends.”

            Lord, Leonard thought, there it was. The whole problem in a handful of innocent words. “Well, I don’t,” he said, and the flicker of disappointment and pain in Pavel’s eyes was enough to confirm his suspicions. Jim was right, after all. The only people they’d fooled had been themselves. “I mean, we can’t be _friends_.”

            Pavel looked like he’d just been sucker-punched, but he nodded as if that made sense. Before Leonard could reassure him, he said: “Because you are with the captain.”

            “Because- wait what?” Leonard asked incredulously, whatever he’d meant to say fleeing. Of all the hundreds of scenarios he had discussed with himself overnight, this was not one of them. “No, I- I’m not with Jim. Is that what you- is that…” Leonard trailed off, mind blazing over the last few days, back to the planet.

            _I am worried about how Captain Kirk will react to what we have done_.

            _You think Jim would have a problem with this?_

_Don’t you?_

            “No… Pavel…” Leonard said, giving a little shake of his head. “I’ve never been with Jim. He’s my friend, the best one I ever had, but it’s not like that. When I had nothin’ left in this world, Jim gave me something to hold onto while I picked myself up off the floor, and, God help me, I do love him, but I’m not…” He hesitated, swallowed thickly and forced himself to hold Pavel’s gaze. “I’m not in love with _Jim_.”

            Pavel gave him a soft look of confusion. “Then why…?”

            Leonard let out a low breath, feeling like he had been punched in the gut. He had no idea how Pavel could not tell, and all Leonard wanted to do was take Pavel’s face in both hands and kiss him until he understood. But that hadn’t been enough before, and he knew it wouldn’t be enough now. He had to use words this time, had to say it as plainly as he knew how so that there was no chance of being misunderstood again.

            “Because I’m in love with _you_ , Pashenka,” Leonard admitted softly. “I can’t be just friends with you.” He closed his eyes for a second, forced himself to speak around the instinct to prevent himself from being vulnerable. “I’m an all or nothin’ kind of guy.”

            “All,” Pavel rasped, and when Leonard looked up he found himself instantly caught in Pavel’s shaky, hopeful gaze. “Please, Len. I want all of you.”

            “Yeah?” Leonard said, vision going a little dizzy at the edges with the relief overloading his system. “Yeah, okay,” he managed, just barely. “You got me.” Then Leonard closed the distance between them, warm palms finding Pavel’s jaw just as Pavel gave a choked laugh of relief and surged forward to meet him.

            It was easily the worst kiss they had yet shared, messy and too full of relief and Leonard broke it halfway through with a breathy, happy laugh that sounded more like a sob. He gently set his forehead against Pavel’s, hands slipping down Pavel’s neck to rest where it curved to meet his shoulders. For another second, Pavel’s unsteady breathing was all that mattered.

            “Pair a’ fools we make,” Leonard mumbled, and pulled back just far enough to place a kiss on Pavel’s forehead. “You ok?”

            Pavel wiped at his eyes with the edge of his palm, but he smiled brightly. “We are late, Leonard.”

            “Yeah,” Leonard agreed, and reluctantly pulled away a little more. He glanced over to where Pavel had been sitting with Sulu, but the table was empty. The entire mess was empty, Leonard realized. They really were late. He sighed, and brushed another kiss to Pavel’s lips before releasing him. “Yeah, okay. Go on, then. Just… come by after? I’ll make dinner.”

            “It is a date,” Pavel said, the same sly smile Leonard had come to love sneaking onto those beautiful lips. Leonard could not help but smile in return, heart warm in his chest even as he watched Pavel disappear out the door, wishing he could follow.

* * *

 

            The chime at his door came exactly on time, and Leonard took a half a second to breathe before he crossed the room to answer it. His nerves had his heart racing far faster than normal and he could feel his hands shaking a little. Despite that Pavel had told him he felt the same way as Leonard, despite the two messages Pavel had sent during shift expressing excitement to see him tonight, Leonard found himself worried.

            This time it was _real_ , this time they were playing for keeps, and it had been a very, very long time since Leonard had done that. He just wanted everything to go perfectly.

            He need not have worried. Leonard barely managed to get out a hello before Pavel had crowded him back into his quarters, the door hissing shut behind him. Pavel swallowed Leonard’s sound of surprise, pulling his face down while walking him back until Leonard’s back hit the nearest wall. Then he kept on pressing, until their chests bumped and Leonard gave a small huff of laughter.

            The sound melted into a moan as Pavel ground their hips together. Even through their slacks, Leonard could feel how hard Pavel already was; there was no mistaking attraction or intention, now. A frisson of desire swirled through Leonard’s middle, shooting straight to his cock and reaching up to clench around his heart.

            Surrendering to the moment, Leonard fisted his hands at Pavel’s waist, drawing him impossibly closer and delving into his mouth with equal ardor. He had a moment to spread still-shaking fingers appreciatively over the lithe muscles of Pavel’s hips and backside before Pavel broke the kiss as abruptly as he had begun it.

            “Sorry,” Pavel said breathlessly, not sounding sorry at all as his questing hands found their way beneath Leonard’s shirt and began to ruck the material up with clear intention. “Sorry,” he repeated, pulling the shirt up over Leonard’s head, and Leonard thought maybe the apology was for stopping.

            The second Leonard was free, Pavel’s mouth found his again, desperate and hot, and Leonard could barely think past Pavel bucking and rolling against him. His own hands sought to touch every plane and curve of Pavel’s body now that he had permission, now that he knew Pavel wanted it as much as he did.

            _That_ was a heady concept, and Leonard fisted one hand in the back of Pavel’s shirt to free it from his pants, suddenly near desperation himself, needing to touch skin. He stroked hungry fingers over the small of Pavel’s back, another zing of desire sparking through him at the moan of encouragement Pavel gave in return.

            When he seemed to realize Leonard was not actually _removing_ the shirt, Pavel reared back with an impatient noise, plucking at the hem of his shirt and missing it twice in his hurry. Leonard had to laugh again, surprised and delighted by Pavel’s determination, but he recognized an opening when he saw one. So, while Pavel wriggled his shirt up and over his head, Leonard slid questing hands down Pavel’s back, over his ass, and down to the backs of his thighs.

            “Hold on,” he ordered, gruff but warm against the rumpled fabric near Pavel’s head, and smiled when Pavel froze at the warning. Leonard didn’t give him more time, just gripped onto the backs of his thighs and hoisted him right off his feet.

            Pavel yelped, arms and legs wrapping around Leonard’s body to hold on as ordered. Leonard’s breath caught in his chest as their hips met, cradling their straining cocks together, and his step faltered just a little. Pavel flailed his head free of the shirt, shaking his curls loose and blinking arousal-bright eyes at Leonard before smiling. Leonard could do nothing but stare, entranced by the beauty in his arms.

            “Do not drop me,” Pavel said, leaning back so that Leonard had to adjust his grip and slow almost to a stop on his way to the bedroom. Then Pavel slung his shirt, still wrapped around his wrists, around the back of Leonard’s neck and used it to pull him into another kiss.          

            Pavel’s cloth-bound hands cupped Leonard’s face, drawing him close and deep and wet, accompanied by needy little noises as he rocked and shifted, trying to get closer without unbalancing them. The noises only grew more urgent as he tried to free his hands without freeing Leonard’s mouth. Leonard moved them the last few steps to the bed to lay Pavel down so he could help.

            Or at least, that was the plan.

            As soon as Leonard started to lean to set Pavel down, Pavel swung his weight and Leonard’s world whirled. A second later, he found himself flat on his back on his own bed, his view of the ceiling obscured by golden curls and unfocused, blown out eyes directed south. Pavel used the weight of Leonard’s neck on his shirt to free his hands and resume touching every piece of Leonard’s skin he could find.

            “Pavel,” Leonard groaned hoarsely as Pavel rolled his hips down. Leonard could still recognize that their night would be over embarrassingly quick if he did not regain some semblance of control. “Darlin’, you gotta slow down.”

            Pavel made a noise of disagreement, threading all ten fingers up into Leonard’s hair and kissing him again in no uncertain way. Leonard’s hands tightened on Pavel’s thighs, feeling the shift and flex of them as Pavel ground against him. The guttural _growl_ Pavel loosed a moment later as he wrenched himself away from their kiss very nearly undid Leonard.

            “More,” Pavel insisted, somewhere between a plea and an order, and Leonard had to tamp down on something primal and pleased when Pavel slithered down his torso and began to fiddle at the fly of Leonard’s pants with trembling fingers.

            For the first time so far, Pavel removed himself almost entirely from Leonard’s space, just long enough for Leonard to lift his hips and let Pavel tug at his pants. He closed his eyes at Pavel’s clipped keen of desire when Leonard’s cock sprung free of the material. Leonard could practically see the decision in Pavel’s eyes as he dropped Leonard’s clothing.

            While a part of him wanted to savor the moment, wanted to ask Pavel to take his time getting out of his own clothing, seeing Pavel so eager to get down to skin was its own pleasure. Where Pavel had fumbled slightly with Leonard’s clothing, he suffered no similar delays with his own. Leonard’s cock gave a hard twitch watching Pavel shimmy free of the fabric and crawl quickly back up Leonard’s body in almost one motion.

            Leonard had to grab at Pavel’s hips to slow him when Pavel rubbed up against him with nothing in between them anymore. “Easy, darlin’,” Leonard breathed, fingers flexing and releasing, both worried about and uncaring whether he left marks.

            Pavel gave a breathless shake of his head, apparently beyond words, arching down to bite at Leonard’s nipple without warning, drawing a cry from Leonard. Pavel clearly had no intention of slowing down and Leonard could not find it in himself to say no. This was what he had wanted; Pavel’s weight holding him down, Pavel’s hands everywhere they could reach, Pavel not even trying to hold back anymore.

            Leonard shifted his body, bucking up to lift Pavel as he moved to try to find some leverage to thrust back. As soon as he settled he released Pavel’s hips, hands smoothing up over miles of pale skin. Pavel groaned, breathtaking in his abandon as he dropped his forehead to Leonard’s collarbone to expose the soft curve of his neck.

            Reaching up, Leonard ran his fingers over that sensitive skin, eyes fluttering closed at the noise pulled from Pavel, so similar to the first, accidental touch and yet so different. Leonard was certain he would hear that sound in his dreams for the rest of his life, and he raised his head, following his touch with his lips and tongue just to hear it again now.

            At the soft graze of teeth, Pavel turned his nose into Leonard’s neck with a wrecked cry, hips rocking down as he came hard over Leonard’s stomach.

            Leonard shifted, smiling into Pavel’s hair, fingers trailing soothing tracks up and down Pavel’s bowed spine while he came down from the orgasm. Pavel’s breath came in rough pants against Leonard’s neck, and Leonard murmured nonsense endearments until Pavel finally shifted.

            “You okay?” Leonard asked, feeling muscles quiver under Pavel’s skin.

            “Okay!” Pavel scoffed, as if it were not a question worth asking. “I have thought of this all day.” He reared back, lifting himself from Leonard’s chest to look him in the eyes. “I have thought of nothing else.” He gave a little rock of his hips, sliding along Leonard’s still-hard cock and then further, to straddle his thighs. With a sly grin, Pavel wrapped a fist around him, tight and sure. “Truthfully, I am still thinking of nothing else.”

            The thought sent a twitch through Leonard’s dick and he chuckled, the sound morphing into a low moan as Pavel stroked him once. “You weren’t the only one,” he managed, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to remember how to do _anything_ except let Pavel have whatever he wanted.

            “What did you think of?” Pavel asked, giving a twist of his palm over the head of Leonard’s cock that almost sent him face first into orgasm.

            Leonard grasped for words and let his tongue have the first ones he found. “I pictured more dinner first.”

            Pavel’s bark of laughter startled Leonard, but he grinned as well at the warm fondness in Pavel’s eyes as he stared down at him. “Dinner?” Pavel echoed, and before Leonard could explain that he’d cooked a whole entire meal, Pavel scooted back again, toward Leonard’s knees, and raised his eyebrows suggestively. “I could still eat something.” Even as he leaned down, intention evident, he hesitated. “If… if that is okay?”

            “Yes,” Leonard said, too quickly. “It’s more than okay, but you don’t have to, Pavel.”

            “I want to,” Pavel said, just as quickly, and then dropped his lashes, looking down to where his fingers curled idly around the base of Leonard’s dick, carding gently through the coarse hairs there. “But you stopped, last time.”

            Leonard swallowed hard, remembering how ridiculously much he had wanted to put his mouth on Pavel that last time on the planet. He had told himself it was too intimate, something he would not have been able to explain away later. Something he would not have been able to forget or give up.

            “It was too much for pretending,” he said, throat tight as he sat up on his elbows. When Pavel looked back up, Leonard reached to run fingers over the curve of his jaw, thumb brushing gently over Pavel’s lips. His heart skipped a beat when Pavel lipped softly at the pad of it. “I couldn’ta done that and let you go again.”

            Pavel searched his face for just a heartbeat before he turned his head and pressed a kiss to Leonard’s palm, nuzzling into his touch. Then he pulled back without giving Leonard a second longer to be sentimental, and bent back to his task. Pavel’s lips wrapped hot around him, tongue swirling around Leonard’s cockhead before flattening against the underside.

            Leonard yelped, redirecting his grabbing hands to the bedsheets instead of Pavel’s head, just barely keeping his hips from bucking up into that silken heat. He felt Pavel’s lips curve into a smile and he moaned a curse that sounded a lot like Pavel’s name.

            Then Pavel slowly slid his mouth down, and any coherency Leonard had left fled him entirely. The practiced ease of Pavel’s motions betrayed his experience, and Leonard found himself grateful once again. Without thinking, he reached down, needing to feel the way he moved inside and out. He ran reverent fingers along where Pavel’s cheeks hollowed around him, where Pavel’s lips sealed against his shaft, and tried to fathom how he had ever gotten so lucky.

            Releasing Leonard’s cock with an obscene pop, Pavel turned to mouth at Leonard’s fingers instead. Leonard’s breath stuck in his throat as he attempted to parse the sight, watching his fingers disappear between those swollen lips. Pavel’s grin was absolutely feline as he drew back, nuzzling his cheek into Leonard’s palm.

            Then he shifted, tipping his head to press his sweat-damp curls against Leonard’s palm instead, and Leonard placed his hand at the nape of Pavel’s neck, nails running lightly over the short hairs there. Pavel practically purred under his touch, looking up to meet Leonard’s gaze and offer a contented smile.

            “All right,” Leonard rasped, after a moment of searching Pavel’s face and finding only patience and entreaty. “We can do it how ya want.”

            “I want,” Pavel said, pressing into Leonard’s hand again. “Please.”

            Leonard curled his fingers tightly once to demonstrate his willingness, and Pavel happily bent back to his ministrations. Leonard dropped his head back, unable to watch without coming right then and there. He kept his hand where Pavel had put it, not pushing or directing, simply hanging on for dear life, and used his other to toy with his own nipple until Pavel’s fingers laced with his to join in.

            He shouted when Pavel tweaked it, tugging as gently as he could at the curls in his fingers. He was so close, too close.

            “Pavel,” he warned hoarsely, but Pavel just made a noise of acknowledgement and sunk down until Leonard felt his cock hit the back of Pavel’s throat. All that heat closed tight and hot around him as Pavel swallowed, and that was all it took.

            With a final, helpless gasp, Leonard let go of his control, panting and shuddering through his orgasm. His senses whited out as Pavel stayed put a moment longer, swallowing around him a couple of times before pulling off and letting his hand gently work Leonard through the aftershocks.

            As soon as his mouth was free again, Leonard dragged Pavel up into a kiss by the back of the neck. Pavel came willingly when he realized Leonard’s intention, laughing and leaning into the kiss with one hand over Leonard’s racing heart, lips and teeth and tongue and the taste of Leonard flavoring his enthusiasm.

            In all of Earth and the heavens they traveled through daily, Leonard thought he’d yet to find anything more perfect than that moment.

            For several long minutes, they continued to explore one another’s mouths thoroughly, playful even through post-orgasmic lethargy. Leonard scritched his short nails through the hair at the back of Pavel’s head, liking the feel and the sound it made, until Pavel broke the kiss and turned sort of boneless against his side.

            “We are doing that again,” Pavel said against the skin of Leonard’s shoulder. “Soon.”

            Leonard chuckled, but shifted and began herding both himself and Pavel into sitting positions. “Tonight, if you give me a while,” he agreed. “But I’m gonna get us clean and fed before that.”

            “It will be late by then,” Pavel told him, even as he clambered out of bed.

            “You got a hot date?” Leonard said, ignoring Pavel’s answer of _yes_. “We’ve got all night, I already requested coverage for our shifts tomorrow,” he said, more seriously. “That is, if you want to stay.”

            “I want to stay,” Pavel said, holding out his hand to help Leonard off the bed as well. “Forever, this time.”

            Leonard looked at Pavel’s outstretched hand, feeling his belly give a little swoop at the gesture, the same one that had started all of this. “Yeah?” he said, chest fit to burst with happiness at how far they had come since then. “Me too. I want you to stay forever, too.”

            Looking up to meet Pavel’s eyes, Leonard reached up to take his hand, and couldn’t help the soft smile that crept onto his lips. Without hesitation, Pavel twined their fingers together, smiling back, and Leonard knew they were going to be okay.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is one more installment, the Epilogue, which I will post in a day or two. It's already finished, I'm just editing it. I've also been working on a small side-story to this one, with just Omaru, since many of you requested hearing more about the Telk. I hope to post the first of those chapters alongside of the epilogue, or at least shortly afterward, definitely before NaNoWriMo in November.
> 
> I hope you have enjoyed this long ride! I certainly have enjoyed all of you <3


	20. The Epilogue

* * *

 

Two Years Later…

 

 

 

            “We are going to be late,” Pavel panted, shoulder blades against the cold metal of the shower wall.

            Leonard just hummed, pressing another kiss to the soft skin of Pavel’s neck, sending a bolt of pleasure across Pavel’s nerves. Time did not seem to concern Leonard at all, so Pavel dropped his head back against the wall. Without hesitation, Leonard ran lips and teeth and tongue across the new expanse of offered skin and swiftly found his favorite spot. He bit right below where the collar of Pavel’s uniform would rest; the doctor was nothing if not precise in where he chose to leave his marks.

            Pavel groaned, fingers tightening in Leonard’s hair just long enough to tug once, and relished the answering sound Leonard made. “Len,” Pavel said breathlessly, “we are supposed to get clean.”

            “We’re in the shower,” Leonard mumbled against the rise of his collarbone. Pavel shivered. “It’ll be clean.”

            A helpless laugh bubbled out of Pavel, cut off by a gasp as Leonard slithered hands down his ribs, his hips, following them down until he was on his knees in front of Pavel.

            “’Sides,” Leonard growled, nosing now at Pavel’s hip, rubbing the stubble of his cheek over the sensitive skin, “can’t go out like _this_.”

            Pavel closed his eyes, not bothering to swallow his moan as Leonard brushed lips along the side of his stiff cock, the touch cool in the heat of the shower. “Let me guess,” Pavel managed to say, voice a little more thready than he intended, “you have a cure?”

            He felt the curve of Leonard’s smile, the warm puff of his breath. “You wanna find out?”

            “Yes,” Pavel said, tripping over the word in his haste to say it. “Yes, Len, please,” he added for good measure.

            “Not running too late?” Leonard asked, teasing now, as he mouthed along Pavel’s shaft, not nearly enough to do more than drive Pavel wild. “You sure?”

            “Very sure,” Pavel assured him, the words slipping loose into a breathless noise as Leonard’s lips found the softest, most sensitive spot. He tightened his fingers in Leonard’s hair again and Leonard took the hint with grace.

            And for a time, Pavel lost himself to the heat of Leonard’s eager mouth, the flex of his fingers against the meat of Pavel’s thigh, the careful, purposeful way his other hand moved along the base of Pavel’s cock. It had been two years since their visit to the Telk homeworld, and yet Pavel still found himself amazed every time Leonard leapt at a chance to touch him like this, to kiss him, hold him- _love_ him.

            Especially at times like these, when they actually did have business, and neither one of them wanted to pry themselves away to attend to it.

            “Len,” he mumbled, hazy arousal sharpening as his body tensed. He knew what he wanted to say, to warn Leonard, but words had abandoned him.

            His trembling fingers tightening on Leonard’s shoulder were enough warning, though. Dimly, Pavel recognized Leonard’s hum of agreement, and the sudden vibration would have been enough to send Pavel over the edge even if Leonard had not sunk as far down as he could go. Pavel gave a soft cry as he came, shuddering down his whole body as he felt Leonard swallow, tongue working gently until Pavel relaxed.

            Leonard wiped at the corner of his mouth when he pulled off, eyes dark as he leaned back to give Pavel room to sag against the wall. For another moment, Pavel breathed in the steam of the shower, and then he lurched upright and leaned forward, hands reaching. Leonard met him halfway, soft and slow, one palm smoothing over Pavel’s hand on his jaw.

            When they parted, Pavel missed the taste of Leonard’s smile. “We are still going to be late, Len,” he murmured.

            Clambering to his feet, Leonard just chuckled. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “They sent a message while you were turning on the water, to say they’d be a little late.”

            “Leonard!” Pavel chided, but he could not keep the smile off his face. “You are very sneaky. I will make you wait, just for that.”

            With a grin, Leonard leaned back into the spray to wet down his hair. Pavel made a small, pained noise as he watched the water sluice over Leonard’s skin, running down the base of his erection where it curved up toward his belly. Pavel could wait. Mostly.

            He peeled his attention away from Leonard’s hands kneading to wet his hair, and grabbed the small vial of soap from the alcove in the shower wall. It was cool as it poured into his hand, and it took only a small touch to get Leonard to lean forward so Pavel could lather it into his soft hair. They took turns scrubbing each other down, slow and soft and gentle, relishing the opportunity to soak in water instead of sonics, compliments of the ambassadors they were about to go see.

            Leonard got out first to fetch their towels, tossing Pavel’s over his sopping wet curls and ruffling it to dry them. Pavel laughed and when he emerged, dragged Leonard into another kiss. They somehow managed to dry off and get into the appropriate amount of dress clothing to go into public, and then they were out the door.

 

* * *

 

            The breakfast bar was brightly lit, walls and floors and tables and chairs all a clean white, laced in silver and almost full due to the early morning hour. Pavel picked a place to sit in easy view of the entrance so they would not be missed. Leonard joined him a moment later, having stopped to grab drinks. He set Pavel’s coffee down in front of him and took a seat to his right with his own drink. Pavel smiled and wrapped both hands around the warm mug.

            They did not have to wait long. Pavel spotted the iridescent grey of Telk garments as soon as they crossed the threshold, and waved a hand to catch their attention. He was surprised to see four forms light up purple in excitement; they had only expected to be meeting the two ambassadors.

            “Omaru,” Pavel greeted warmly as the group arrived to the table.

            “Pavel!” Oma exclaimed happily, offering palms to exchange the Telk greeting. Pavel returned it a little clumsily for not having done it in so long, but Oma did not comment. “And Leonard. It is good to see you both alive.”

            Leonard smiled, moving to exchange greetings with both of them as well. “It is good to see you as well. You’ve brought friends?”

            Pavel could not blame him for his uncertain tone; the two standing patiently just behind Omaru were clearly grey Telk, and even if the two species got along on paper, Pavel knew the grey Telk did not like to leave the planet. Seeing them off planet, much less following a pair of white Telk to personal reunions, was a little out of the ordinary.

            This did not, however, appear to faze Omaru. “Yes!” Oma agreed, turning a pleased shade of purple as they moved aside to reveal their two companions. “This is Pru, and Gai. They have wanted to see you again for a long time.”

            “Again?” Pavel echoed, racking his brain to recall the names, but these two looked young, and Pavel had no memory of hearing those names before. He extended his palms to greet them anyway.

            “Hello,” Pru said, tentacled hands ghosting over and around Pavel’s before settling palm-to-palm.

            Sensation tingled up Pavel’s arm from the warm, dry contact, and Pavel drew in breath a little too quickly. For just an instant, he could feel everything Pru felt, from the soft thrum of their thoughts and memories to the excitement and happiness under their skin, and even, to a degree, his own palms against theirs.  Overwhelmed, he could not stop the breathless laugh that broke from his chest, aware only dimly of Leonard’s steadying hands on his shoulders.

            “Oh,” he said, realization dawning on him as he withdrew from Pru’s gentle grasp. The contact left a residual sense of peace and contentment, the same way touching Pru’s egg in the siita had done.

            “Oh?” Leonard asked, sounding a little put out. “What d’you mean _oh_?”

            Words were not enough, so Pavel took Leonard’s hand and held it out for Pru to touch next. Leonard tugged back for a second with half a protest that truncated as soon as Pru’s soft tentacle-fingers met his skin. Pavel watched his eyes go glassy and his entire demeanor relaxed as he recognized the same thing as Pavel had.

            “Oh,” Leonard said when Pru withdrew. “You hatched from the eggs we touched. Both of you.”

            “Yes,” Pru said gently, a soft shade of purple-blue. “We shared your minds. It has… changed us. We wished to thank you for this.”

            “You have helped us immensely,” Gai added. “Interacting with you during our development has given us an ability to understand and better communicate with humans, and to a lesser degree the Telmari.”

            Pavel smiled, a little confused. “Telmari?”

            “Our people,” Aru said. “We have recently taken a new name, to make negotiation with the Telk easier. Because of your interaction, with us and with them, Pru and Gai are most capable to serve as ambassadors between the Telk, Telmari, and Federation. When we heard what happened to your Enterprise, we requested to come here from the new colony as soon as possible, and Pru and Gai asked to accompany us in order to meet you again.”

            Pavel glanced at Leonard at the same time Leonard glanced back, and Pavel knew he felt just as overwhelmed. They had literally changed the course of history for two entire species. “That is amazing,” Pavel managed. “How is the new colony?”

            “It is well,” Oma said, flushing pink-purple. “We do not spend as much time there anymore. Fil is an exceptional leader, and Gop is… as enthusiastic as ever. The colony flourishes under their care.”

            Pavel’s smile grew. The last update Omaru had sent to him had detailed that upcoming change in leadership. Gop had wanted to lead everything right from the start, but it had taken a while to get everything organized to a point where that was possible. In the interim, Filgop had taken a position at the nearest starbase, aiding in technological research centering around their holosuite technology.

            Back on their home planet, after the captain had gotten permission to pull the white Telk from the planet as refugees, the Federation had stepped in to facilitate peace talks and arrange for the safe return of the white Telk to the planet. They had agreed to form their own colony off the mainland, and Omaru had been placed in charge first. They knew the most about the situation, knew all of the white Telk either personally or by name, except from one colony.

            During peace talks, the Riiya sector, where Omaru had hatched had been exposed and uprooted for their barbaric practices, and the Telk within had been collected for persecution. The white Telk rescued from the labyrinth beneath the Riiya colony were still, even two Standard years later, recovering from the trauma of their imprisonment, and the experimenting that had been done on them. Much to everyone’s surprise, Yewhara led the charge against the Riiya Telk with extreme prejudice, and had been the first sector leaders to agree to aid the white Telk in settling.

            Even more surprising, Yewhara had admitted they had known what Omaru were upon first finding them, alone and scared and in need of a community. Previously, Yewhara had been told white Telk do not survive softbond, and yet Omaru were far older than that. In Hara’s words, _enough damage had been done, we could cause no more_ , and so they had taken them in and protected Omaru, giving them a chance to prove they could incorporate into the community like normal. In Yew’s words, _Omaru did not disappoint_.

            Although Omaru had not been amused at all, Yewhara’s cooperation in settling the white Telk in the old Riiya sector had been invaluable. Omaru and Yewhara had been able to negotiate quickly and without bad blood after that. When Filgop had returned from space almost a year ago, Omaru had finally accepted ambassador status from the Federation, and began training Filgop to take over their planetside responsibilities.

            “That is good to hear,” Pavel said. “And you? Are you happy away from your home and your people?”

            Oma flushed a pretty shade of cornflower blue. “My people are safe at home. I am happy so long as this is true. Perhaps…” they trailed off, color wavering but not changing. “You are here under grave circumstances,” they said hesitantly. “But we are given to understand your ship will be several more Federation months in repair. Perhaps you would like to visit?”

            Pavel’s belly turned over at the reminder of how seriously the Enterprise had been damaged in the battle with Krall. _Repairs_ did not really cover it; reconstruction, maybe. Salvage. They had six months to go, if everything went well enough.

            “A hot bath doesn’t sound half bad,” Leonard said, seeming to notice Pavel’s silence. “Thank you, by the way, for having our water limit increased here for a few days.”

            Omaru both turned pink. “We were not sure they would honor the request,” Aru admitted. “But we brought more than enough to share on our vessel. We are lucky such an abundant resource is valued by your Federation. You will visit, then?”

            Leonard looked over to Pavel, but Pavel could not give him an answer. They would need to request the time from the captain, and from the admiralty. There was no good reason such a request would be denied, though- the Enterprise and her crew had just saved the day _again_ , after all.

            “We will have to ask our leaders,” Leonard said, perfectly interpreting Pavel’s look. “But we would love to come back.”

            The pink intensified. “That is wonderful news!” Oma said excitedly. “We shall send a request to your leaders as well. We have wanted an opportunity to celebrate your true bond since we heard.”

            Pavel’s thumb touched the underside of the golden band around his ring finger, turning it a little, and he grinned. “We call it marriage,” Pavel told them, a thrill skating under his skin and picking up his heartbeat to say the words aloud. It was still new to him, still exciting. He looked over at Leonard, who seemed just as pleased.

            “Humans do have a custom we haven’t observed yet,” Leonard said, looking only at Pavel, despite speaking to Omaru. “After the wedding, they take a vacation.”

            “A honeymoon,” Pavel supplied, chest swelling with excitement.

            They had not had the time or ability to snatch more than a day or two alone at any given time; the Enterprise had been out in deep space for a long time, exploring farther than anyone else, in territories often completely unknown and almost never safe. Even their marriage ceremony had been aboard the ship, with the captain presiding.

            “Yeah,” Leonard said, soft and warm. He held out his hand, his own ring glinting gold in the artificial light. “A real honeymoon.”

            Pavel nodded, and put his hand in Leonard’s. “I would love that,” he said quietly, using his grip to tug Leonard close enough to kiss.

            Beside them, the Telmari and Telk both gave a high, pleased trill.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Well... this is weird, folks. It's weird to have it be finished. It has been a long and particularly lovely ride with all of you- I can honestly say you are the absolute best, most responsive group of readers I've ever had. I have loved every single comment you've ever given me and I super appreciate everyone that stuck with this story, you totally rock!
> 
> I also uploaded [the prologue to Omaru's story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12251556/chapters/27839445)! I'm considering doing a one-shot of the infamous New Years Party that was referenced several times in this story, because it sounds like fun.
> 
> See you around, friends!!
> 
>  


	21. Bonus: Fanart!

A while back, I commissioned a piece from the absolutely lovely [SleepyMcCoy](http://sleepymccoy.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. She can also be found [on AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepymccoy/pseuds/sleepymccoy) and writes REALLY GOOD THINGS so definitely check her out!!

This is the piece she did for "Hold Hand and Play Nice," of Leonard and Pavel down in the reservoir with Omaru. Thank you, Sleepy, it turned out wonderful!!


End file.
